LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 






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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



^p ©Una 3Dean Proctor. 



A RUSSIAN JOURNEY. New Edition, enlarged. 

i6mo, $1.25. 
POEMS. Revised and Enlarged Edition. i6mo, 

$1.25. 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 

Boston and New York. 



POEMS 



BY 




EDNA DEAN PROCTOR 
It 

AUTHOR OF "a RUSSIAN JOURNEY" 



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BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

1890 



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Copyright, 1890, 
By EDNA DEAN PROCTOR. 

All rights reserved. 



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The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company. 



To 

M^ trotter 
DAVID CHOATE PROCTOR 

A LIVING, INSPIRING PRESENCE 
THOUGH UNSEEN 



CONTENTS. 





PAQE 


And Hera's altar, Buddha' s fane 


. 1 


Cleobis and Biton 


3 


The Last Inca 


. 9 


Helena's Beacons 


17 


InOldSiam 


. 23 


El Mahdi to the Tribes of the Soudan . 


25 


" The Prayer in the Desert " . 


. 29 


The Virgin of St. Mark's 


32 


Matins at St. Mary's 


. 35 


The Russian's Dream of Constantinople 


38 


Holy Russia 


. 40 


Our Country ! whose eagle exults as he flies . 


45 


Yosemite 


. 47 


The Lost War-Sloop .... 


48 


The Brooklyn Bridge .... 


. 51 


The Mountain Maid .... 


53 


New Hampshire 


. 56 


Illinois 


63 


Peoria. . . . . 


. 64 


The Blue above Potomac 


65 


The Washington Monument 


. 67 


The Lady of the White House 


69 


Kearsarg-e 


. 70 


Monadnoek in October 


73 


Contooeook River 


. 75 



VI CONTENTS. 




The Rescue 


. . 78 


Merrimack River at its Source . 


. 83 


Merrimack River at its Mouth 


84 


The Portsmouth Sailor 


85 


Horace Greeley .... 


90 


Still will the Christmas bells be sweet 


. 93 


The Queen of the Year 


95 


Christmas Eve at Bethlehem . 


. 96 


The Winter Solstice . 


99 


Waiting for Easter . . . . 


. 101 


Easter Morning .... 


104 


Easter Bells 


. 107 


To the minstrel said the king 


109 


Heaven, Lord, I cannot lose . 


. Ill 


Born of the Spirit 


114 


Lights and Shadows .... 


. 116 


The Cry of Job . 


117 


Daily Dying 


. 118 


Loved and Lost 


120 


The Tryst of Souls . . . . 


. 123 


Tlie Heavens .... 


126 


How Little of our Life 


. 129 


The Flight of Souls . 


131 


A Prayer 


. 132 


A Truant from Eden . 


134 


Stanley Ware 


. 136 


Alone with God .... 


138 


'' Come unto Me " . . . . 


. 139 


Prayers for the Dead . 


142 


The Perfect Day . . . . 


. 143 


In Memory of A. E. C 


144 


When I am Dead .... 


. 146 


Take Heart 


147 


Forward ...... 


. 148 


Through Storm and Sun 


150 


The Homeless 


. 150 



CONTENTS, 


vii 


Hope and Despair 


151 


" This, too, wiU pass " . 


. 151 


Fair scenes and songs in dreams on high 


153 


England 


. 155 


The Song by the Barada 


156 


The South Wind . . . , 


. 159 


The Oriole 


160 


The Song of Songs .... 


. 161 


Goldenrod and Asters . 


163 


A Crimson Clover .... 


. 165 


The Rose-Bush in Autumn . 


167 


Good-Night ..... 


. 168 


When the Rose has opened . 


169 


Thy Psyche 


. . 171 


Love Song of the Omahas . 


174 


Teresa 


. 176 


The Gypsy . 


179 


Balta ...... 


. 180 


Russia - . 


181 


Alexander II. of Russia . 


. 183 


St. Petersburg 


185 


Moscow • . . . •. 


. 186 


Moscow Bells . . . . . 


187 


Moscow at Evening .... 


. 188 


The Shrines of Moscow 


189 


Troitsa Monastery .... 


. 190 


The Fair of Nijni Novgorod 


191 


Asia at Nijni ..... 


. 192 


Kazan ....... 


193 


The Lower Volga .... 


. 194 


Farewell to the Volga . . . . 


195 


The River Don 


. 197 


The Cossack . , . . . 


198 


The Carpathians .... 


. 199 


The Plains of Bessarabia . 


200 


Baidar Gate 


. 201 



Vlll 



CONTENTS. 



The Crimean Coast and Alupka . 


202 


The English Cemetery at Sevastopol 


. 203 


Frederick III. of Germany . 


204 


Robert Burns ...... 


. 205 


hed are the bugles that called to the strife 


209 


Heroes 


. 211 


The Virginia Scaffold .... 


213 


The White Slaves 


. 216 


Harvest and Liberty .... 


220 


The Stripes and the Stars 


. 223 


Compromise ...... 


225 


^Vho 's Ready ? 


. 227 


The Mississippi ..... 


229 


By the Shenandoah ..... 


. 240 


For Freedom 


244 


The Hundred Days' Men .... 


. 246 


The Grave of Lincoln .... 


248 



The numbers attached to some of the poems refer to 
notes at the end of the book. 



And Hera's altar, Buddha's fane, 

Fair temples to the Sun, 
Cathedral aisle and soaring strain, 
The fountained mosque, the pilgrim train, 

But seek the Eternal One ! 
Earth yearns, through strife and wrong and woe, 
The perfect Lord to find and know. 



CLEOBIS AND BITOK^ 
(In Argos.) 

Praise to the Queen of Heaven, Hera stately 
and fair ! 

I, her Argive priestess, above all women am 
blest! 

Her glorious gaze meets mine when the sky is 
blue and bare ; 

I see the gleam of her robes as clouds float up 
from the west ; — 

List, while her viewless singer, the cuckoo, en- 
chants the air, 

And the flowers of her pomegranates flame on 
the thicket's crest. 

Azure and gold was that morning, her festival 
morn; 

Purple through silvery haze the peaks encom- 
passed the plain ; 

Ocean rolled flashing to ether, and a wind with 
sunrise born 

Blew from the Fields Elysian beyond the blight 
of pain ; 



4 CLEOBIS AND BITON. 

Crocus and hyacinth blossomed ; the nightingale 
sang on the thorn ; 

And with music like Hebe's laughter the hill- 
brooks leapt to the main. 

Argos its gates had opened, and matrons and 

maids and men 
Hastened to Hera's temple on the slope of the 

terraced hill ; 
But the strong white oxen were ploughing far 

over the reedy fen, 
And I, her priestess and lover, tarried impatient 

still, — 
For only the strong white oxen, by meadow and 

stream and glen 
Could draw my chariot thither, secure from the 

lightest ill. 

Chaplet and bough were fading ; eager the maids 

for the race ; 
But the toiling oxen came not, and the sun went 

up the sky. 
What should I answer the Goddess ? How could 

I sue for grace 
If her rites should fail, or the garlands and gifts 

unoffered lie ? 
And my heart was heavy within me, — when, 

straight to the chariot's place, 
Cleobis tall, and Biton, strode with a joyful cry ! 



CLEOBIS AND BITON. 5 

Cleobis tall, and Biton, my sons, my pride, my 

life; 
Beauty and strength and valor from heroes of 

old had they ; 
Both in the Games were victors — ay, both, in 

godlike strife, 
Had borne the crown of olive from a thousand 

youths away ! 
While heralds proclaimed their triumph, and 

many a maid and wife 
Sighed to Hera for husband and son like them, 

that day. 

Swift in the car they placed me, and on their 
own necks laid 

The yoke of the tardy oxen, lest the Goddess 
should suffer wrong ! — 

Then cheers went up around us ; the flutes me- 
lodious played ; 

And the glad procession faneward moved to the 
swelHng choral song ; 

While the flower of the Argive women, in stain- 
less white arrayed, 

Circled the car with mazy steps and led the won- 
dering throng. 

Full five and forty furlongs did they draw me to 

the door, 
And the whole assembly shouted till the firm 

earth seemed to reel ; — 



6 CLEOBIS AND BITON. 

The women extolled the mother these hero-sons 

who bore, 
And the men the youths immortal who could 

such strength reveal ; 
And lo ! as I descended I saw an eagle soar, 
And knew great Zeus in heaven had marked 

their holy zeal. 

O'erwhelmed by the loving service, uplifted to 

the sky, 
I entered the temple, and standing before the 

image, prayed : 
" O glorious Argive Hera ! what deed with this 

can vie ? 
What other sons such homage to their mother 

and thee have paid ? — 
Grant them the rarest blessing that all the Gods 

on high 
Can give to mortals ; and never on earth let their 

memory fade ! " 

The sacrifice smoked on the altar ; incense 
clouded the air ; 

And with hymns, and full libations poured from 
the golden bowls. 

They took of the holy banquet, and knew — the 
princely pair — 

Their names in light were written on the tem- 
ple's proudest scrolls ; 



CLEOBIS AND BITON. 7 

Then, weary with toil and worship, they sank to 

slumber there, 
While the wind blew soft and the Sun-god turned 

to his western goals. 

In the altar's shadow sitting I watched their 
tranquil sleep, 

And thought of the fame and gladness the long 
years held in store ; 

When the fairest maids of Argos their bridal 
feasts should keep. 

Maids they should bring all jewelled and blush- 
ing to their door ; 

While the Dorian land — nay, Hellas — should 
praise and honor heap 

On the youths who put the Goddess their festal 
ease before. 

But day was fast declining to sunset's golden 

gleam, 
And, still with joy transported, I stooped, their 

rest to rouse ; . . . 
Oh ! direful, direful slumber ! . . . Oh ! bliss 

beyond my dream ! . . . 
The breath had left their parted lips, and pallid 

were their brows ! 
This was the rarest blessing ; this was the gift 

supreme, — 
The summons from the mighty Gods that doth 

the soul unhouse ! 



8 CLEOBIS AND BITON. 

Dead in their strength and beauty ; dead on the 

temple-fioor ; . . . 
Nay ! living with the Deathless Ones by the 

meads of asphodel ! 
And agonized, — yet raptured to see the smile 

they wore, — 
I cried, as close I clasped them, " Hera ! It 

is well ! . . . 
Nor wail nor dirge shall sound for them — the 

blest forevermore, — 
But paeans sweet, triumphant, to all the Gods 

shall sweU ! " . . . 

Their tombs rise high on the hillside by Hera's 

guarding fane, 
Strewn ever with brightest blossoms, bedewed 

with richest wine ; 
And their forms, at the door, in marble, fronting 

their native plain, 
I set where the car was stayed that morn, — set 

for a sacred sign ; 
While the Argives, that their glory on earth 

might never wane, 
In Delphi placed their statues, before Apollo's 

shrine. 
And shall I mourn their parting ? let my tears 

fall as rain ? 
Nay ! paeans for the heroes borne to the life 

divine ! 



THE LAST INCA.2 

In lone Caxamalca Pizarro awaits 

The moment the Inca shall enter its gates, 

His horsemen, his footmen, concealed in the halls, 

Wide-portaled, that circle the plaza's gray walls ; 

For the people have fled to the camp of the king 

Till they find what the Spaniards' fell presence 

will bring — 
The snowy tents marshalled his guests to dismay. 
On the valley's green border a bird's flight away. 
The dark plot is woven ; the mass has been said ; 
Jehovah of battles invoked for their head ; 
And captain and soldier with valiant accord 
Chanted, " Exsurge, Domine, — Rise, O Lord ! " 

" He comes ! " cried the sentinel set in the tower ; 
"His legions, advancing, like thmider-clouds 

lower ; 
Hark ! hear the wild songs the red heathen are 

singing 
As they clear from his path every straw that is 

clinging ! 
And nearer, and nearer ... I see the bright 

swarm 



10 THE LAST INCA. 

Of nobles and guards that environ his form ; 
Their robes white and azure, their hair decked 

with gold, 
Triumphant, unnumbered, their prince they en- 
fold ; 
They sweep by the fortress ; their lines curve 

apart ; 
Dios ! 't is the Inca ! . . . What glowing rays 

dart 
From his throne, as a sun, on their shoulders 

borne high. 
Plumed and gemmed with the Virgin's own altar 

to vie ! 
And there he reclines with the air of a god. 
As if armies and kingdoms would fall at his 

nod ; 
On his brow the imperial horla is bound. 
Its crimson fringe drooping his temples around. 
And above float the plumes of that bird of the 

skies 
Which only, they say, for his diadem flies ; 
His mantle, how gorgeous ; and lo, while you 

listen, 
I see at his throat his great emeralds glisten ; . . . 
He enters the gateway ; his hordes follow fast ; 
Dios ! we have trapped this proud pagan at 

last ! " 

The palanquin halts in the heart of the square ; 
And still every Spaniard hides deep in his lair. 



THE LAST INCA. 11 

" Now where are the strangers ? " the grave Inca 

calls, 
As he sees but his train 'twixt the compassing 

walls ; — 
" I have come, at their craving, to sup with them 

here 
In my own Caxamalca, and what should they 

fear ? " 

Then forth strode Valverde, Pizarro's own priest, 

Saint Dominic's friar, to bid to the feast ; 

A Bible, a crucifix, solemn he bears, 

And straight through the throng to the Inca he 

fares. 
With slightest obeisance, in sounding Castilian, — 
While the monarch gazed calm from his golden 

pavilion. 
And Philip, interpreter, stood at his side, — 
*' My commander has sent me to tell you," he 

cried, 
" Of the Faith which is true and the King who 

is strong ; 
We have sailed the wide ocean to show you your 

wrong ; " — 
And, deeming his creed would convince and 

appall. 
Creation, the Trinity, Eden, the Fall, 
The Saviour incarnate, his life, crucifixion, 
Saint Peter, King Charles, and the Pope's male- 
diction 



12 THE LAST INCA. 

On all who proved recreant, passed in review ; 
While Indian-Philip his words coined anew, 
And added explainingly, " Christians adore 
These three Gods and one God, and that will 

make four." 
Thus ended Yalverde : *' The Pope, and our 

King, 
Earth's mightiest ruler, have sent us to bring 
This light in your darkness. Renounce your 

false ways 
And learn the true God of the Spaniards to 

praise ! 
Become their good vassal ; — so vengeance shall 

spare, 
And you and your land have their fostering 

care." 

" Atdc f " groaned the Inca, on fire when he 

heard ; 
His proud form dilated as word after word 
Fell hot on his ear ; and in answer he flames, 
" What warrant has Pope or has King for his 

claims ? " — 
While the people's deep murmur crept out to the 

valley 
Where legion on legion would rise at his rally ; — 
"This book," said Valverde ; and sternly he 

placed 
The Bible before him. The Inca in haste 
Scans its pages ; then dashed it disdainfully 

down : 



THE LAST INCA. 13 

" Tell your comrades the insults they offer my 

crown — 
Their crimes in my realm they shall amply atone ! 
Know that I am most mighty — the strongest 

my throne ; 
Your King may be powerful — a brother I '11 

be — 
But vassal to none on the land or the sea ! 
And my Faith — by the heavens ! I never will 

alter ! 
As soon shall the dawn in the glowing east 

falter ! 
Your own God, you tell me, was cruelly slain 
By the men he created ; hung, dead, in his pain ; 
But mine lives forever ! my father, the Sun, 
The deathless, the glorious, unchangeable One ; — 
Behold where he shines in celestial array ! 
Then back to your darkness ! I bide with the 

day!" 

" Base hound ! " said the friar, as stooping he 

caught 
The book to his breast, and with quickened steps 

sought 
Pizarro, who waited his coming within, — 
" If you wish," he burst out, " the vast wager to 

win, 
Talk no more with this dog full of malice and 

pride ! 
His clans fill the fields. Once our force is defied, 



14 THE LAST INCA. 

Nor wisdom nor courage their swarms can 

evade ; — • 

Set on ! I absolve you ! and God be your aid ! " 

" 'T is the hour ! " cried Pizarro ; and, boldest to 

dare, 
The white scarf, his signal, waves ghostly in air ! 
Like thunder on Andes the fortress gun roars. 
And horsemen and footmen spring fierce from 

the doors ; 
" Saint Jago and at them ! " they shout as they 

come, 
And nobles and people bewildered and dumb. 
Unarmed and defenseless, are slaughtered like 

sheep 
In the pit of the shambles ! The dread horses 

leap 
On their quivering forms as they cower from the 

stroke 
Of the sabres that flash through the eddying 

smoke, 
As they writhe with the balls from the muskets 

outpoured, — 
And all in the name of the merciful Lord ! 
Yet still through the horror, the anguish, the 

stress. 
Round their heaven- born Inca devoted they 

press ; 
At his feet lie his princes, the dying, the dead. 
But others crowd eager to stand in their stead, 



THE LAST INCA. 15 

And, trampled and mangled, no weapons to 

wield, 
Seek yet from the fiends their loved monarch to 

shield ! 
As a bark on the billows his litter is swayed 
By the rush and the blast of the mad caval- 
cade ; — 
Ho ! the bearers have fallen ! The Inca is 

down! 
Estete has snatched his imperial crown ! 
And, dragged and despoiled by the ravaging 

host, 
His bright vesture sullied, his jewels the boast 
Of his captors, they seize him and bear him 

away. 
Strong - guarded, as fades the last glory of 

day! . . . 
Then a shadow stole over the face of the Sun 
In the shrines ; and a wail from the sweet winds 

that run 
Through the dusk, thrilled the air ; but no star 

could deliver ; — 
The light of the Incas had vanished forever ! . . . 
And his people, bereft of their Child of the Sky, 
Break wild through the wall in their terror, and 

fly 

To the vales, to the mountains, cut down as they 

go 
By the sword and the shot and the hoof of the 

foe! . . . 



16 THE LAST INCA. 

Now night o'er the scene spreads her pitying 
pall ; — 

" Bid the trumpets," Pizarro cries, " sound a re- 
call, 

And Te Deums be sung, for Jehovah has given 

This might to our arms, else in vain we had 
striven ! " 

And the chants, and the groans of the dying, as 
one, 

Went up to the Lord when the carnage was 
done. 



HELENA'S BEAC0NS.8 

(The Finding of the Cross, A. D. 326.) 

Helena, Empress-mother, 

Weary with years and woes, 
Was fain to see the holy place 

Of the Saviour's last repose. 
*' The rock ? the tomb ? " cried Constantine, 

" Nay, could His Cross be found, 
What glory for my life, my reign. 

To time's remotest bound ! 
For since the day its splendor blazed 

By the sun in the blinding sky. 
And the whole silent, awe-struck host 

Knew more than Jove was nigh. 
And the night the Lord himself came down 

The mystic symbol showing, 
And I saw His face as the seraphs see, 

With love and pity glowing, — 
I have stamped it on the Empire 

As God on heaven's dome ; 
By this sign I have conquered 

In camp and court and home, 
And my own statue bears it up. 

The bronze I reared in Rome ! 



18 HELENA'S BEACONS. 

It beams in jewels from my crown ; 

My standard takes its form, 
And the noblest knights about it press 

Nor fear the battle's storm ; 
In every banner's fold it waves, 

On every shield it shines. 
And the helmets lift it proud and high 

Along their gleaming lines. 
O saintly mother, hasten hence 

With an imperial train ! 
And towers shall rise for watching eyes 
On cliff and crag against the skies 

By stream and mount and main, 
That fire may flash the bliss to me 
If you should find the wondrous Tree ! " 

So, when the favoring west-wind blew 

And the stars of summer rose. 
Went Helena, in vesture gray. 
With a princely band to guard her way 

To the place of the Lord's repose ; — 
Nor pride, nor pomp, nor purple state, 
Meek she knocked at the sacred gate 

And prayed the bars unclose. 
And entering in with reverent feet 

And murnnired vow and prayer, 
She called the faithful ones to tell 
The secret guarded long and well 

Of the Holy Places there. 
Alas, alas ! on Calvary 

Was a shameless pagan shrine ; 



HELENA'S BEACONS. 19 

And there where dropped the bitter myrrh 

Flowed fast the festal wine, 
And wanton songs disturbed the air 

That throbbed with sighs divine ! 
" God pardon us ! " cried Helena ; 

And at her word they go 
With eager hands and raptured hearts 

To lay the temple low. 
Column and altar, porch and roof, 

And the statues false and fair. 
To the hateful waste of Hinnom's vale 

With swift accord they bear ; 
And the earth the lustrous marbles hid, 

The heaped and heavy mould, 
Abroad they fling ; till, far beneath. 

The Tomb their eyes behold — 
The Sepulchre, and the rifted Rock, 

And the Stone the angel rolled ! 
" God is our help ! " quoth Helena, 

" The Cross we yet shall see ; " — 
And searching all the eastern ledge. 
Deep in a pit below its edge, 
Just as the young moon's tender beam 
Touched Zion's height and Kedron's stream. 

They found the blessed Tree ! 
And O the shouts that rent the air, 

And the joy divine, 
As they flew to light the beacon -fire 
And flash the bliss of his soul's desire 

To saintly Constantine ! . . . 



20 HELENA'S BEACdNS. 

A flame, a flame on David's tower ! 

A flame on Ramah's height ! 
Samaria's hill has caught the gleam ; 

Lone Tabor's oaks are bright ! 
On Hermon, crown of Lebanon, 

Blaze the sweet cedar boughs ; 
Berytus reddens grove and bay 

The northern strand to rouse ; 
And the cliffs of queenly Antioch 

Send rosier light to heaven 
Than lit her stately colonnades 
Or blushed in Daphne's myrtle shades 
When feast and songf and dance of maids 

To her loved god were given ! 
And now it leaps the Issus gulf ; 

Cilicia's plain it thiills ; 
Cold Cydnus glows, and Tarsus throws 

The splendor to the hills ; 
And the peaks of cloudy Taurus lean 

Through purple-tinted air, 
And catch the fire on wall and spire 

And snow-fields dazzling fair. 
Till far northwest, by gorge and steep. 

The joyful beacons flare. 
For the winds are out, and the cressets stream 
To the stars and the young moon's tender beam 

From heights where the eagle springs, — 
Past many a city gray and old. 
Past fount and fane and the sculptured hold 

Where sleep the Phrygian kings ! 



HELENA'S BEACONS. 21 

They beam above Maeander's tide ; 

Wake Sardis with its shrines ; 
And lo ! again leap shore and main 
Where Lesbos fronts the Mysian plain 
And lights her answering pines ! 
From isle to isle, from wave to lea, 

The torches never falter, 
Till high they burn, like the flush of dawn, 

On Ilion's mountain altar ! 
So clear and high on Ida's crest 
And the crags that climb where the north winds 
rest, 

That great Olympus sees — 
Asian Olympus crowned with snows, 
A peak of heaven at daylight's close 

Dark-set in towering^ trees. 
And higher still his beacon soars, 

A hundred flames in one, 
And glows ad own the dusky vales 
And gilds the far Propontis-sails, 

Red as the rising sun. 
It flashes to the palace walls ! 

The waiting Emperor greets ! 
And the shouts that shook Jerusalem 

Ring through the royal streets ! 
And torches blaze and banners gleam. 

While loud the heralds call : 
" To the church of the Holy Apostles, 

That the Lord be praised for all ! " 
And wild the people throng the way 
To the stately courts more bright than day, 



22 HELENA'S BEACONS. 

At their head exultant Constantine 

With a waxen taper tall ! 
And the roof resounds with chant and psalm 

And naany a holy hymn — 
" Glory to God! " the angels sung, 

And the song of the cherubim — 
Till the sorrowing Christ from the altar-screen 
With a smile of love looks down, 
And the shadowy cross beside him borne 

Glows like a victor's crown ; 
Till sweet, in the pauses of the praise, 

Float echoes from the sky. 
And they know the joy of the faithful here 

Is the joy of the blest on high ! 



IN OLD SIAM.* 

O THE wonder ! O the glory ! 

Hunting deer by hill and glade, 
In the balm and flush of morning 

Down the woodland ways I strayed. 
Bright the lotus buds were blowing ; 

Rose and jasmine wreathed the bowers ; 
Every thicket rung with music ; 

Dropped the dews in pearly showers. 
O the wonder ! O the glory ! 

Merit's ravishing reward ! 
'Neath a stately Bo-tree's shadow, 

Still as statue on the sward, 

Stood the pure, celestial lord. 

The White Elephant, a Buddha! 

To the earth I fell and murmured, 

** Mighty one ! how blest my fate 
In the forest thus to find thee — 

I so low and thou so great ! " 
Breathless then I sought the temple. 

Calling high o'er hymn and prayer, 
" Leave your chant, O priests, and offer 

Thanks and gifts beyond compare ! 



24 IN OLD SIAM. 

What is Kandy's Tooth, or Footprint, 
To a living, present lord ? — 

Tell the rulers ! rouse the soldiers ! 
Bid your fairest scribe record 
I have seen him on the sward, 
The White Elephant, a Buddha ! " 

How we bore him to the palace 
Down Meinam's rejoicing tide ! — 

I a noble now and honored. 

Standing proud my King beside. 

Trumpets blew and cannon thundered ; 
Chimed the sweet pagoda bells ; 

On his forehead holy water 

Princes poured from jewelled shells ; 

Every temple heaped its altars ; 
Every town was wild with glee ; 

So with song and shout and splendor 
To the palace home came he. 
To his shrine that fronts the sea, — 
The White Elephant, a Buddha ! 



EL MAHDI TO THE TRIBES OF THE 
SOUDAN.^ 

(1884.) 

I HAVE heard the voice of the Lord 

As the Prophet heard, of old ; 
For me have the blessed angels 

The Book of Fate unrolled ; 
Gabriel, holiest, highest, 

Flashed to my cave, from the sky, 
And cried, as the dawn illumed the east, 

" Wake ! for the end is nigh ! 
Speed ! for 't is thine to save the saints 

And their proud oppressors slay, 
And to fill the earth with righteousness 

Before the Judgment-Day ! " 

Then he was gone as the lightning goes ; 

And my heart leapt up as flame ; 
And forth I rushed to the Holy War 

For the glory of Allah's name ! 
And rippling river and rustling reeds 

And the wind of the desert sighing, 
Echoed his cry as I passed them by, 

" Speed ! for the hours are flying ! " 
The sunbeams shone like lances keen 

Across the Meccan plain ; 



26 EL MAHDI TO THE TRIBES. 

The roar of hosts was in my ears, 

Their fury in my brain, 
And I vowed to the God of the Faithful 

His Prophet alone should reign ! 

Now who is on the side of God 

To fight this fight with me, — 
To break the ranks of the Infidels 

And hurl them back to the sea, 
And all this tortured, trampled land 

From greed and spoil to free ? 
Tliis land where the bitter cry goes up 

From even the lips of the dumb : 
" Mata yathar El Mahdi — 

When will the Mahdi come ? " 
Who yearns for bliss in Paradise ? 

Who fears eternal flame ? 
Let him follow me to the Holy War 

For the glory of Allah's name ! 
Leave your flocks on the grassy hills 

Of cool Atbara's stream ; 
Under the palms by the lonely wells 

No more at noontide dream ; 
From Nile's fair groves and uplands, 

From meadow and marsh and mere, 
Throng to the Crescent banner 

With lance and shield and spear ! 
Come on your flying stallions 

From lordly Darfur's side ; 
Bold from Sahara's burning depths 

On your swift camels ride ; 



EL MAHDI TO THE TRIBES 27 

The sun by day shall bid you speed, 

By night each guiding star, 
Through the thorny wastes of Kordofan, 

The wide plains of Sennaar ! 
And from Fez and far Morocco, 

From Yemen and Hejaz, — 
For round the world to the Faithful, 

This fire of God shall blaze — 
And from the realms of the Indian sea, 

And isles of spice and balm, 
Shall a thousand thousand hither haste 

For the glory of Islam ! 

And as in the valley of Bedr, 

When the Moslems charged the foe, 
The angels stooped to the stormy pass 

And laid the faithless low. 
So shall they watch my standard. 

And all along our line 
Will hover their shining legions 

And the battle be divine ! 
For Azrael, the Death-angel, 

With a banner made of light, 
And eyes that burn like the star of morn, 

Will lead us in the fight. 
And should you fall in the conflict, — 

O glorious, glad surprise ! 
White-winged camels will bear you thence 

To the bowers of Paradise ! 
Up to the crystal fountains 

And the feast of the Tuba tree, 



28 EL MAHDI TO THE TRIBES. 

The songs of Israfil to hear, 
The face of God to see ! 

Allah ! I long for the onset ! 

Moslems ! welcome the day 
When forth in the rosy dawn we sweep 

As victors to the fray ! 
For fierce as the lion leaping 

At night from his woody lair ; 
Dread as the hot simoom whose breath 

No living thing may dare ; 
Strong as the sun when he mounts the sky 

To bathe in the western sea — 
So fierce, to the godless of the earth, 

So dread, so strong are we ! 
And by the soul of Mohammed — 

Nay, by the Throne of God — 
The Infidel and the Spoiler 

Shall into the dust be trod, 
And away by the winds of heaven 

As worthless chaff be blown, 
And the Prophet and true Believers 

Shall rule in the earth alone ! 



"THE PRAYER IN THE DESERT." 

(Painted by Geromb.) 

Serene, alone, the Arab stands ; 
Behind him stretch the solemn sands 
Back to the barren hills that lie, 
A tawny ridge, against the sky. 
Slow-winding from their dim defiles 
O'er scorching waste and sedgy isles, 
From lordly Cairo, Mecca-bound, 
Threading the plain without a sound 
Save when the burdened camels groan 
Or tents are pitched by fountain-stone, 
The long-drawn caravan is seen 
Wrapped in the desert's blinding sheen. 

No muezzin calls from minaret. 
Though clear the fiery sun has set ; 
But waste and hill and brooding sky 
Have stirred his soul to deep reply. 
And he, the chief of all his tribe. 
Has spurred him forward to ascribe 
Glory to Allah, ere the gloom 
And fierceness of the dread simoom 
Shall overwhelm, or failing well 
No pilgrim spare, His power to tell. 



30 ''THE PRAYER IN THE DESERT:* 

He plants his lance ; his steed he frees ; 
Light, from the north, the rising breeze 
Lifts the hot cloud, and moans away 
Down to some Petra's still decay, 
Sad, as if wailing fall and rise 
Were won from dying pilgrims' sighs, — 
Their couch by billowy sands o'erblown 
Where Azrael keeps watch alone. 
And now, his sandals' thongs unbound, 
The desert space is holy ground ; 
No more he sees the weary train, 
The sombre hills, the burning plain, 
But greenest fields of Paradise 
Shine fair before his ravished eyes. 
He hears the flow of crystal streams ; 
He sees the wondrous light that gleams 
From Allah's throne, ablaze with gems, 
And, far below, the slender stems 
Of plumy palms, whose ripe dates fall 
When winds blow cool across the wall ; 
While sweeter than the bulbul's note 

Within the dusk pomegranate-bowers. 
When its full soul it fain would float 

Forth to their yearning, flaming flowers. 
The voice of angel Israfil 

Comes winding, warbling through the air, 
O that 't were resurrection's peal, 

And he, the dead, might waken there — 
Waken and follow Eden-ward, 
Lost in the splendor of the Lord ! 



''THE PBAYER IN THE DESEBT:' 81 

Soon will his comrades round him throng, 
While tents are pitched with jest and song; 
But not the night-dews, chill and fleet, 
Nor noon-tide's burning, blasting heat, 
Nor red simoom, nor mocking well 
Can break his vision's sacred spell, 
Or lure his joy that forward flies 
To build and sing in fairer skies. 

O Arab ! we are one with thee ! 
All day we rove some desert sea ; 
The winds are dead, the wells are dry. 
Above us flames the torrid sky ; 
And only in some twilight calm, 
When fires are spent and air is balm, 
Beyond our griefs and fears we ride ; 
Our sandal-cares we cast aside ; 
The clouds of doubt are backward blown, 
And lo ! we meet the Lord alone ! 
1863. 



THE VIRGIN OF ST. MARK'S.* 

(The Sacristan's Story.) 

Hid in a secret recess 

Of our most holy shrine, 
St. Mark's, the pride of Venice, 

Is a picture all divine, — 
The Virgin and infant Jesus 

St. Luke, enraptured, wrought, 
And Dandolo, the mighty Doge, 

Home from Byzantium brought ; 
Not the Madonna of the wall — 

That sad, enshrouded star — 
But the gem the Cassars bore afield 

In their imperial car ! 
Her eyes have the tint of olives ; 

Her brow is fair as wheat ; 
And her snowy veil and violet robe 

Fall chastely to her feet, 
As on the beaming, beauteous Babe 

She smiles celestial-sweet. 

The Turks — a shameless, godless horde 
Doomed to eternal fire — 



THE VIRGIN OF ST. MARK'S. 33 

Say from Sophia's altar-screen 

They dragged it in the mire ! 
Say that beneath their horses' hoofs 

In scorn 't was trodden down 
When fierce Mohammed sacked the church 

And seized Byzantium's crown ! 
They did not know that Dandolo, 

Two hundred years before, 
Safe to St. Mark's of Yenice 

The priceless Image bore ; 
And all the while Our Lady kept 

Beneath these domes her rest, — 
The peace of God within her heart, 

The Babe upon her breast, 
And only songs of praise to stir 

The violet of her vest. 

But the spring that guards the treasure 

Nor priest nor Pope can find ; 
And here, while the ages pass, it lies 

In the gorgeous pile enshrined, — 
The Virgin with eyes as olives dark, 

And brow as fair as wheat, 
And veil and robe like angels' wings 

Folded down to her feet ; 
Pure as the whitest lily 

Blown in the heavenly garden, 
Where the saints in perfect bliss do walk, 

And the Lord himself is warden ! 



34 THE VIRGIN OF ST. MARK'S. 

Yet the chants and the blessed incense 

Steal to her secret door ; 
She hears the prayers at the altar 

Her gracious help implore ; 
And knows the lion of St. Mark 

Keeps watch forevermore ! 



MATINS AT ST. MARY'S.' 

Richard, the Lion-hearted, 

Parting for Palestine, 
In lone St. Mary's Abbey, 

Knelt at Our Lady's shrine ; 
And begged that the Abbot's blessing, 

And the monks' prevailing prayer, 
Might follow him over the waters, 

And the deserts hot and bare. 

" God be praised ! " quoth the Abbot, 
" By Holy Rood I swear 
That at matins and sext and compline, 

Through the church's sacred air, 
Petitions shall rise to Heaven 

That the wave and the shore may be 
Safe for our Sovereign, Richard, 
Till Conqueror home comes he I " 

The moon of another April 
Shone on the Eastern main ; 

And sailing by rocky Cyprus, 
The Holy Land to gain. 

Were the King and his Norman nobles 
When out of the south there blew 



36 MATINS AT ST. MARY'S. 

The blast of the dread sirocco — 
And away the good ship flew ! 

Into the blinding darkness, 
Into the howling storm, 
While the salt spray wreathed before her 
A beckoning, demon form. 
" Mary, have mercy ! " the sailors 

Shrieked as the masts went down ; 
*' Bitter is death," sighed the nobles, 
" So near to our glory's crown ! " 

Leaning over the bulwarks, 

Richard, risen from rest. 
With his white brow bared to the tempest. 

And his blue eyes turned to the West, 
Cried, in a voice of anguish 

That rung o'er the foaming sea, 
" Would God it were time for matins, 

And the gray monks prayed for me ! " 

Meanwhile, on the fields of England 

The dew distilled its balm, 
And the lone Cistercian Abbey 

Slept in the midnight calm — 
Till the moon had passed the zenith, 

And the watch of morning fell. 
When, over meadow and moorland, 

Rung clear the matin-bell. 



MATINS AT ST. MAR VS. 37 

Then, through the silent cloisters, 

And under the arches dim, 
Abbot, and monk, and prior, 

Chanting a holy hymn, -^ 
While the flame of the stone-hewn cressets 

Flared with its rise and fall, 
And the Virgin smiled serenely 

From her niche in the lofty wall, — 

Entered the aisle to the altar. 

And knelt with the fervent prayer 
That still, for their Sovereign, Richard, 
The winds might be soft and fair. 
" Bless him, O Lord," quoth the Abbot, 
" And bring him in peace again 
With the sign of our faith triumphant ! " 
And the monks said low, " Amen ! " 

That moment, over the tempest, 
A lull stole out of the West, 
And the ship rocked, light as a sea-bird 
Asleep on the ocean's breast. 
" Lord of my life," cried Richard, 
" Thine shall the glory be ! 
I know 't is the hour for matins. 

And the gray monks pray for me I " 



THE RUSSIAN'S DREAM OF CON- 
STANTINOPLE. 

Hail to the glorious morning 

When the Cross again shall shine 
On the summit of Saint Sophia, 

O city of Constantine ! 
And that day of sack and slaughter 

When the wild, despairing cries 
Of " Kyrie Eleison ! " fainter 

Went wailing up to the skies. 
Shall be lost in the splendid triumph 

As the Church reclaims her own. 
And the Patriarch welcomes our Lord, the Czar, 

To the Caesars' ancient throne ! 

Shame to the laggard Latins ! 

Shame to the grovelling Greeks ! 
The crescent above Sophia's dome 

Their foul dishonor speaks ! 
But, over Holy Russia, 

Its Cross triumphant towers. 
And the creed and the crown of Constantine 

Alike shall yet be ours ; 
And the grandeur of our dominion 

For the woes of the past atone, 



THE BUSSIAN'S DREAM. 39 

When the Patriarch welcomes our Lord, the Czar, 
To the Caesars' ancient throne ! 

In the sky of the south, at midnight, 

We have seen God's flaming sign, 
And we know He will drive the Moslem horde, 

In wrath, from his sacred shrine ! 
Silent will be the muezzin 

As the sun on Asia sets ; 
Folded the crescent banner ; 

Crumbled the minarets. 
Then, under that dome of glory, 

Victorious chants we '11 raise. 
While the saints look down with loving eyes, 

And the gems of the altar blaze ! 
Hail to the day when the Eagles 

And the Cross shall gain their own, 
As the Patriarch welcomes our Lord, the Czar, 

To the Caesars' ancient throne ! 



HOLY RUSSIA. 

(SERoros OF Tboitsa, loquitur.) 

Have you heard how Holy Russia 

Is guarded, night and day, 
By saints gone home to the world of light, 

Yet watching her realm for aye ? — 
Nicholas, Vladimir, Michael, 

Catharine, Olga, Anna ; 
Barbara, borne from her silent tower 

To the angels' glad hosanna ; 
Cyril, Ivan, Alexander, 

Sergius, Feodor ; 
Basil, the bishop beloved. 

And a thousand thousand more. 
They walk the streets of the city. 

Waving their stately palms, 
And the river that runs by the Father's throne 

Keeps time to their joyous psalms. 
But they do not forget, in their rapture, 

The land of their love below ; 
Blessing they send to its poorest friend, 

Defiance to proudest foe. 
So in cloister, and palace, and cottage, 

Cathedral, and wayside shrine. 



HOLY RUSSIA. 41 

We cherish their sacred Icons, 

Token of care divine ; 
And with beaten gold in fret and fold, 

And gems the Czar might wear. 
And costliest pearls of the Indian seas. 

We make their vesture fair. 
We set them along our altars 

In many a gorgeous row. 
The blessed Saviour in their midst, 

And the Virgin, pure as snow ; 
And lamps we hang before them. 

Soft as the star that shines 
In the rosy west, when the purple clouds 

Drift dark above the pines. 
The deep chants ring ; the censers swing 

In wreaths of fragrance by ; 
And there we bend, while our prayers ascend 

To their waiting hearts on high ; 
And our Lord, and Mary-Mother, 

With faces sweet and grave, 
Remembering all their tears and woes, 

Grant every boon they crave. 

Have you heard that each true-born Russian, 

Child of the Lord in baptism, 
Receives some name of the shining ones 

With the touch of the precious chrism ? — 
And the saint, thenceforth, is his angel ; 

Ready, through gloom or sun. 
To share his sorrows and cheer his way 

Till his earthly years are done. 



42 HOLY RUSSIA. 

When friends have fled, and love is lost, 

And darkest ills betide. 
There 's a gleam of wings athwart the sky, 

And the peace of the glorified 
Falls on his soul as the gentle dew 

Descends on the parching plain, — 
And he knows that his angel heard his sighs 

And stooped to heal his pain. 
Nor cares he when, or where, or how 

The hour of his death may come. 
For the Lord of the saints will welcome him, 

And his angel bear him home. 
And, to mark his faith's devotion, 

As a jewel of love and pride 
He bears on his breast forever 

The cross of the Crucified ; — 
Bright with rubies and diamonds. 

Fashioned of silver and gold, 
Or only carved from the cedar 

That grows on the windy wold ; 
Cut from a stone of the Ourals, 

Or the amber that strews the shore ; — 
Close to his heart he wears it 

Till his pulses beat no more. 

O happy, Holy Russia ! 

Thrice favored of the Lord ! 
Around whose towers, when danger lowers, 

The saints keep watch and ward ! 
She need not fear the marshalled hosts 

Of her haughtiest Christian foe ; 



HOLY RUSSIA. 43 

Nor Islam's hate, though at Moscow's gate 

The stormy bugles blow ! 
Fair will her eagle-banners float 

Above Sophia's dome, 
When heaven shall bring her righteous Czar 

In triumph to his Rome ; 
And Constantine and Helena 

Will "Alleluia!" cry, 
To see the cross victorious 

In their imperial sky. 
Ah ! what a day when all the way 

To Marmora's sunny sea — 
From Finland's snows to fields of rose— • 

Shall Holy Russia be ! 



Our Country ! whose eagle exults as he flies 
In the splendor of noonday, broad-breasting £he skies, 
That from ocean to ocean the Land overblown 
By the winds and the shadows is Liberty's own, — 
We hail thee, we crown thee ! To east and to west 
God keep thee the purest, the noblest, the best ; 
While all thy domain with a people He fills 
As free as thy winds and as firm as thy hills ! 



"7 



YOSEMITE. 

Most glorious Temple ! open flung 

Are all thy sculptured doors ; 
Thy mellow chimes are hourly rung, 
Thy Jubilates ceaseless-sung, 

And o'er thy grassy floors 
Reverent I walk, and let my prayers 
Waft heavenward with the morning airs. 

Thy choirs are streams that, thundering, leap 

The mountain barriers dovra ; 
The winds that wail by gorge and steep ; 
The brooks through sunny meads that sweep 

Or foam where canons frown ; 
And crags, and groves by crystal falls, 
Thy altars and confessionals. 

Perpetual masses here intone ; 

Uncounted censers swing ; 
A psalm on every breeze is blown ; 
The echoing peaks from throne to throne 

Greet the indwelling King ; — 
The Lord, the Lord is everywhere. 
And seraph-tongued are earth and air ! 



THE LOST WAR-SLOOP. 

(The Wasp, 1814.) 

O THE pride of Portsmouth water, 

Toast of every brimming beaker, — 

Eighteen hundred and fourteen on land and 

sea, — 
Was the Wasp, the gallant war-sloop. 
Built of oaks Kearsarge had guarded. 
Pines of Maine to lift her colors high and free ! 
Every timber scorning cowards ; 
Every port alert for foemen 
From the masthead seen on weather-side or 

lee ; — 
With eleven guns to starboard. 
And eleven guns to larboard, 
All for glory on a morn of May sailed she. 

British ships were in the offing ; 

Swift and light she sped between them, — 

Well her daring crew knew shoal and wind and 

tide ; 
They had come from Portsmouth river. 
Sea-girt Marblehead and Salem, 
Bays and islands where the fisher-folk abide ; 



THE LOST WAB-SLOOP. 49 

Come for love of home and country, 

Come with wrongs that cried for vengeance, — 

Every man among them brave and true and 

tried. 
" Hearts of oak " are British seamen ? 
Hearts of fire were these, their kindred, 
Flaming till the haughty foe should be descried ! 

From the mountains, from the prairies, 

Blew the west winds glad to waft her ; — 

Ah, what goodly ships before her guns went 

down ! 
Ships with wealth of London laden, 
Ships with treasures of the Indies, 
Till her name brought fear to British wharf and 

town ; 
Till the war-sloops Reindeer, Avon, 
To her valor struck their colors, 
Making coast and ocean ring with her renown ; 
While her captain cried, exultant, 
" Britain, to the bold Republic, 
Of the empire of the seas shall yield the crown ! " 

Oh, the woful, woful ending 

Of the pride of Portsmouth water ! 

Never more to harbor nor to shore came she ! 

Springs returned but brought no tidings ; 

Mothers, maidens, broken-hearted. 

Wept the gallant lads that sailed away in glee. 

Did the bolts of heaven blast her ? 



50 THE LOST WAR-SLOOP. 

Did the hurricanes o'erwhelm her 

With her starry banner and her tall masts three ? 

Was a pirate-fleet her captor ? 

Did she drift to polar oceans ? 

Who shall tell the awful secret of the sea ! 

Who shall tell ? yet many a sailor 
In his watch at dawn or midnight, 
When the wind is wildest and the black waves 

moan, 
Sees a stanch three-master looming ; 
Hears the hurried call to quarters, 
The drum's quick beat and the bugle fiercely 

blown ; — 
Then the cannon's direful thunder 
Echoes far along the billows ; 
Then the victor's shout for the foe overthrown ; — • 
And the watcher knows the phantom 
Is the Wasp, the gallant war-sloop. 
Still a rover of the seas and glory's own ! 



THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE. 

A GRANITE cliff on either shore, 

A highway poised in air ; 
Above, the wheels of traffic roar, 

Below, the fleets sail fair ; — 
And in and out forevermore 
The surging tides of ocean pour, 
And past the towers the white gulls soar 

And winds the sea-clouds bear. 

O peerless this majestic street, 

This road that leaps the brine ! 
Upon its height twin cities meet 

And throng its grand incline, — 
To east, to west, with swiftest feet, 
Though ice may crash and billows beat, 
Though blinding fogs the wave may greet. 
Or golden summer shine. 

Sail up the Bay with morning's beam, 

Or rocky Hellgate by, — 
Its columns rise, its cables gleam. 

Great tents athwart the sky ! 
And lone it looms, august, supreme. 
When, with the splendor of a dream. 
Its blazing cressets gild the stream 

Till evening shadows fly. 



52 THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE. 

By Nile stand proud the pyramids, 
But they were for the dead ; 

The awful gloom that joy forbids, 
The mourners' silent tread. 

The crypt, the coffin's stony lids, — 

Sad as a soul the maze that thrids 

Of dark Amenti, ere it rids 
Its way of judgment dread. 

This glorious arch, these climbing towers, 

Are all for life and cheer ! 
Part of the new world's nobler dowers ; ' 

Hint of millennial year 
That comes apace, though evil lowers, — 
When loftier aims and larger powers 
Shall mould and deck this earth of ours, 

And heaven at length bring near ! 

Unmoved its cliffs shall crown the shore ; 

Its arch the chasm dare ; 
Its network hang, the blue before. 

As gossamer in air ; 
While in and out forevermore 
The surging tides of ocean pour, 
And past its towers the white gulls soar 

And winds the sea-clouds bear. 



THE MOUNTAIN MAID. 

O THE Mountain Maid, New Hampshire ! 

Her steps are light and free 
Whether she treads the lofty heights 

Or follows the brooks to the sea ! 
Her eyes are clear as the skies that hang 

Over her hills of snow, 
And her hair is dark as the densest shade 

That falls where the fir-trees grow — 
The fir-trees slender and sombre 

That climb from the vales below. 

Sweet is her voice as the robin's 

In a lull of the wind of March 
Wooing the shy arbutus 

At the roots of the budding larch ; 
And rich as the ravishing echoes 

On still Franconia's lake 
When the boatman winds his magic horn 

And the tongues of the wood awake, 
While the huge Stone-Face forgets to frown 

And the hare peeps out of the brake. 

The blasts of stormy December 

But brighten the bloom on her cheek, 

And the snows build her statelier temples 
Than to goddess were reared by the Greek. 



54 THE MOUNTAIN MAID. 

She welcomes the fervid summer, 
And flies to the' sounding shore 

Where bleak Boar's Head looks seaward, 
Set in the billows' roar, 

And dreams of her sailors and fishers 
Till cool days come once more. 

Then how fair is the maiden, 

Crowned with the scarlet leaves, 
And wrapped in the tender, misty veil 

The Indian summer weaves ! — 
While the aster blue, and the goldenrod,' 

And immortelles, clustering sweet, 
From Canada down to the sea have spread 

A carpet for her feet ; 
And the faint witch-hazel buds unfold, 

Her latest smile to gi'eet. 

She loves the song of the reaper ; 

The ring of the woodman's steel ; 
The whir of the glancing shuttle ; 

The rush of the tireless wheel. 
But if war befalls, her sons she calls 

From mill and forge and lea, 
And bids them uphold her banner 

Till the land from strife is free ; 
And she hews her oaks into mighty ships 

That sweep the foe from the sea. 



THE MOUNTAIN MAID. 55 

the Mountain Maid, New Hampshire ! 
For beauty and wit and will 

1 '11 pledge her, in draughts from her crystal 

springs, 

As rarest on plain or hill ! 
New York is a princess in purple 

By the gems of her cities crowned ; 
Illinois with the garland of Ceres 

Her tresses of gold has bound, 
Queen of the limitless prairies 

Whose great sheaves heap the ground ; 

And out by the broad Pacific 

Their gay young sisters say, 
*' Ours are the mines of the Indies, 

And the treasures of far Cathay ; " 
And the dames of the South walk proudly 

Where the fig and the orange fall, 
And hid in the high magnolias 

The mocking thrushes call ; 
But the Mountain Maid, New Hampshire, 

Is the rarest of them all ! 



NEW HAMPSHTRE.8 

" A GOODLY realm ! " said Captain Smith, 
Scanning the coast by the Isles of Shoals, 
While the wind blew fair, as in Indian myth 
Blows the breeze from the Land of Souls ; 
Blew from the marshes of Hampton spread 
Level and green that summer day, 
And over the brow of Great Boar's Head, 
From the pines that stretched to the west away ; 
And sunset died on the rijjpling sea. 
Ere to the south, with the wind, sailed he. 
But he told the story in London streets. 
And again to court and Prince and King ; 
" A truce," men cried, " to Virginia's heats ; 
The North is the land of hope and spring ! " 
And in sixteen hundred and twenty-three, 
For Dover meadows and Portsmouth river. 
Bold and earnest they crossed the sea. 
And the realm was theirs and ours forever ! 

Up from the floods of Piscataqua, 
Slowly, slowly they made their way 
Back to the Merrimack's eager tide 
Poured through its meadows rich and wide ; 
And westward turned for the warmer gales 
And the wealth of Connecticut's intervales ; 



NEW HAMPSHIRE. 57 

And to Winnipesaukee's tranquil sea, 

Bosomed in hills and bright with isles 

Where the alder grows and the dark pine tree, 

And the tired wind sleeps and the sunlight smiles ; 

Up and on to the mountains piled. 

Peak o'er peak, in the northern air, 

Home of streams and of winds that wild 

Torrent and tempest valeward bear, — 

Where the great Stone Face looms changeless, 

calm 
As the Sphinx that couches on Egypt's sands. 
And the fir and the sassafras yield their balm 
Sweet as the odors of morning lands, — 
Where the eagle floats in the summer noon. 
While his comrade clouds drift, silent, by, 
And the waters fill with a mystic tune 
The fane the cliffs have built to the sky ! 
And, beyond, to the woods where the huge moose 

browsed, 
And the dun deer drank at the rill unroused 
By hound or horn, and the partridge brood 
Was alone in the leafy solitude ; 
And the lake where the beaver housed her young, 
And the loon's shrill cry from the border rung. 
The lake whence the Beauteous River flows. 
Its fountains fed by Canadian snows. 

What were the labors of Hercules 

To the toils of heroes such as these ? — 

Guarding their homes from savage foes 



68 NEW HAMPSHIRE. 

Cruel as fiends in craft and scorn ; 

Felling the forest with mighty blows ; 

Planting the meadow plots with corn ; 

Hunting the hungry wolf to his lair ; 

Trapping the panther and prowling bear ; 

Bridging the river ; building the mill 

Where the stream had leapt at its frolic will ; 

Rearing, in faith by sorrow tried, 

The church and the school-house, side by side ; 

Fighting the French on the long frontier, 

From Louisburg, set in the sea's domains. 

To proud Quebec and the woods that hear 

Ohio glide to the sunset plains ; 

And when rest and comfort they yearned to see. 

Risking their all to be nobly free ! 

Honor and love for the valiant dead ! 

With reverent breath let their names be read, — 

Hiltons, PeiDperells, SuUivans, Weares, 

Broad is the scroll the list that bears 

Of men as ardent and brave and true 

As ever land in its peril knew. 

And women of pure and glowing lives, 

Meet to be heroes' mothers and wives ! 

For not alone for the golden maize. 

And the fisher's spoils from the teeming bays, 

And the treasures of forest, and hill, and mine 

They gave their barks to the stormy brine, — 

Liberty, Learning, righteous Law 

Shone in the vision they dimly saw 



NEW HAMPSHIBE. 59 

Of the Age to come and the Land to be ; 

And, looking to Heaven, fervently 

They labored and longed through the dawning 

gray 
For the blessed break of that larger day ! 

When the wail of Harvard in sore distress 

Came to their ears through the wilderness, — 

Harvard, the hope of the colonies twain, 

Planted with prayers by the lonely main — 

It was loyal, struggling Portsmouth town 

That sent this gracious message down : 

" Wishing our gratitude to prove, 

And the country and General Court to move 

For the infant College beset with fears, 

(Its loss an omen of ill would be !) 

We promise to pay it, for seven years, 

Sixty pounds sterling, an annual sum, 

Trusting that fuller aid will come," — 

And the Court and the country heard their plea. 

And the sapling grew to the wide-boughed tree. 

And when a century had fled. 

And the war for Freedom thrilled with dread 

Yet welcome summons every home, — 

By the fire-lit hearth, 'neath the starry dome, 

They vowed that never their love should wane 

For the holy cause they burned to gain, 

Till right should rule, and the strife be done ! 

List to the generous deed of one : — 

In the Revolution's darkest days 



60 NEW HAMPSHIRE. 

The Legislature at Exeter met ; 

Money and men they fain would raise, 

And despair on every face was set 

As news of the army's need was read ; 

Then, in the hush, John Langdon said ; 

" Three thousand dollars have I in gold ; 

For as much I will pledge the plate I hold ; 

Eighty casks of Tobago rum ; 

All is the country's. The time will come, 

If we conquer, when amply the debt she '11 pay ; 

If we fail, our property 's worthless." A ray 

Of hope cheered the gloom, while the Governor 
said : 

" For a regiment now, with Stark at its head ! " 

And the boon we gained through the noble 
lender 

Was the Bennington day and Burgoyne's sur- 
render ! " 

Conflict over and weary quest. 

Hid in their hallowed graves they rest ; 

Nor the voice of love, nor the cannon's roar 

Wins them to field or fireside more ! 

Did the glory go from the hills with them ? 

Nay ! for the sons are true to the sires ! 

And the gems they have set in our diadem 

Burn with as rare and brilliant fires. 

And the woodland streams and the mountain airs 

Sing of the fathers' fame with theirs ! 

One, in the shadow of lone Kearsarge 



NEW HAMPSHIBE. 61 

Nurtured for power, like the fabled charge 

Of the gods, by Pelion's woody marge ; 

So lofty his eloquence, stately his mien, 

That, could he have walked the Olympian plain, 

The worshipping, wondering crowds had seen 

Jove descend o'er the feast to reign ! 

And one, with a brow as Balder's fair, 

And his life the grandeur of love and peace ; — 

Easing the burdens the race must bear. 

Toiling for good that all might share, 

Till his white soul found its glad release ! 

And one — a tall Corinthian column, 

Of the temple of justice prop and pride — 

The judge unstained, the patriot tried, 

Gone to the bar supernal, solemn. 

Nor left his peer by Themis' side ! 

Ah ! when the Old World counts her kings. 

And from splendor of castle and palace brings 

The dainty lords her monarchies mould, 

We '11 turn to the hills and say, " Behold 

Webster and Greeley and Chase for three 

Princes of our democracy I " 

Land of the cliff, the stream, the pine, 

Blessing and honor and peace be thine ! 

Still may thy giant mountains rise, 

Lifting their snows to the blue of June, 

And the south wind breathe its tenderest sighs 

Over thy fields in the harvest moon ! 

And the river of rivers, Merrimack, 



G2 NEW HAMPSHIRE. 

Whose current never shall faint or lack 
While the lakes and the bounteous springs re- 
main, — 
Welcome the myriad brooks and rills 
Winding through meadows, leaping from hills. 
To brim its banks for the waiting wheels 
That thrill and fly to its dash and roar 
Till the rocks are passed, and the sea-fog steals 
Over its tide by Newbury's shore ! — 
For the river of rivers is Merrimack, 
Whether it foams with the mountain rain, 
Or toils in the mill-race, deep and black, 
Or, conqueror, rolls to the ocean plain ! 
And still may the hill, the vale, the glen. 
Give thee the might of heroic men. 
And the grace of women pure and fair 
As the Mayflower's bloom when the woods are 

bare ; 
And Truth and Freedom aye find in thee 
Their surest warrant of victory ; — 
Land of fame and of high endeavor. 
Strength and glory be thine forever ! 



ILLINOIS. 

Domain of homes and herds and fields, 
Where lavish nature richest yields 
Through summer's heat and autumn's shine 

Her harvests' bounteous wealth and joy ; 
No star upon our banner set, 
No gem of Freedom's coronet, 
Burns with a prouder ray than thine — 

Majestic Illinois ! 

To north rolls Michigan's blue deep ; 

Ohio, Mississippi, sweep 

Thy prairies by ; and, shrined between, 

Our Lincoln slumbers, past annoy. 
What grandeur should thy people own ! — 
Each man a king, each home a throne. 
Each woman love's and honor's queen, — 

Majestic Illinois ! 



PEORIA. 

(ILLENOIS.) 

O THE music of thy name, 

Peoria ! 
When with May thy meadows flame, 
When the wild crab woos the bees 
To its bowers, and Judas-trees 
Tint thy budding woods with red ; 
When from all thy groves and leas, 
As if grief and care were dead, 
And life and joy forever wed, 
Bluebirds, thrushes, orioles, 
In rapturous song pour forth their souls ; 
Then I know 't was first in May 
Thy Indian lovers came this way, 
And, tranced with bloom and song of bird, 
Coined thee this melodious word, — 
Sweet as far-off bugle note 
Fall the syllables and float — 

Peoria ! 



THE BLUE ABOVE POTOMAC. 

The fairest clouds that deck the sky 

Above Potomac's tide are seen ; — 
The soft tints of the sea-shell's dye ; 
The hues that in Damascus vie 
(Those bowers Barada wanders by) 

With sunsets Hermon shines between ; 
When tranquil evening's latest ray 
O'er Tyre and Sidon melts away 
Through gold and rose and violet 
Till Sharon's plain with dew is wet, 
And the hills darken, one by one. 
And night comes down on Lebanon. 

Rare as the cloud by Volga's stream 

When morning over Asia shone ; 
The cloud which caught its crimson beam 
And sailed o'er earth and sky supreme, 
Wrapped in that fiery-purple gleam — 

An eagle from the Oural blown, 
A messenger of bliss or ban 
With wide wings drifting past Kazan ! 
And dome and cross and minaret 
A moment in its bloom were set ; 
Then flame and purple paled to gray 
And down the steppe dissolved in day. 



66 THE BLUE ABOVE POTOMAC. 

And glows as warm as those that steep 

In twilight splendor Egypt's river, 
When cool the winds from Philae creep 
Past Karnak's immemorial sleep 
And Memnon's watchers fain to keep 
Their gaze adown the east forever ! 
Wliile, north, the pyramids recline, 
Wan peaks against the golden shine, 
And through the orange dusk the plain 
Dims to the desert and the main ; — 
Such morning gleams, such evening glows. 
The blue above Potomac knows. 



THE WASHINGTON MONUMENT. 

Have you seen by Potomac that shaft in the 

skies, 
From the meadows exulting to mate with the 

sun ? — 
Now misty and gray as the clouds it defies, 
Now bright in the splendor its daring has won ! 
The winds are its comrades, the lightnings, the 

storm ; 
The first flush of dawn on its summit shines fair ; 
And the last ray of evening illumines its form 
Towering grand and alone in the limitless air. 

By Nile rise the Pyramids, wrapped in the shade 
Of ages that passed as the waves on the shore ; 
And Karnak, majestic, whose vast colonnades 
A god might have fashioned for man to adore ; 
And Baalbec uplifts like a vision divine 
Its wonder of beauty by Lebanon's wall ; — 
But captive and slave reared in sorrow the shrine, 
The palace, the temple, the pyramid tall. 

To Freedom Potomac's proud obelisk towers. 
And Karnak and Baalbec in beauty outvies. 
For Washington's glory its grandeur empowers, 
And freemen with joy piled its stones to the skies ! 



68 THE WASHINGTON MONUMENT. 

O Symbol of Liberty, matchless, sublime, 

Still soar from the meadows to mate -with the 

sun, 
And see thy Republic, to uttermost time, 
The noble, the peerless, the Many in One ! 



THE LADY OF THE WHITE HOUSE. 

(1887.) 

She bears no crown upon her brow ; 

She boasts no lineage royal ; 
Her dower is to humanity 

A heart that 's warm and loyal. 
The proud Republic's child is she, 

The sovereign People's daughter ; 
Her winsomeness, her womanhood, 

Nature and Freedom taught her. 

No herald cries before her path ; 

No frowning guards attend her ; 
Her gracious ways proclaim her best, 

Her smile is her defender. 
Let Kingdoms pledge their regal dames — 

God bless the People's daughter ! 
Her winsomeness, her womanhood. 

Nature and Freedom taught her. 



KEARSARGE.« 

O LIFT thy head, thou mountain lone, 

And mate thee with the sun ! 
Thy rosy clouds are valeward blown, 
Thy stars that near at midnight shone 

Gone heavenward one by one, 
And half of earth, and half of air, 
Thou risest vast and gray and bare 

And crowned with glory. Far southwest 

Monadnock sinks to see, 
For all its trees and towering crest 
And clear Contoocook from its breast 

Poured down for wood and lea, 
How statelier still, through frost and dew, 
Thy granite cleaves the distant blue. 

And high to north, from fainter sky, 

Franconia's cliffs look down ; 
Home to their crags the eagles fly. 
Deep in their caves the echoes die. 

The sparkling waters frown. 
And the Great Face that guards the glen 
Pales with the pride of mortal men. 



EEARSABGE. 71 

Nay,, from their silent, crystal seat 

The White Hills scan the plain ; 
Nor Saco's leaping, lightsome feet, 
Nor Ammonoosuc wild to greet 

The meadows and the main, 
Nor snows nor thunders can atone 
For splendor thou hast made thine own. 

For thou hast joined the immortal band 

Of hills and streams and plains 
Shrined in the songs of native land, — 
Linked with the deeds of valor grand 

Told when the bright day wanes, — 
Part of the nation's life art thou, 
O mountain of the granite brow ! 

Not Pelion when the Argo rose, 

Grace of its goodliest trees ; 
Nor Norway hills when woodmen's blows 
Their pines sent crashing through the snows 

That kings might rove the seas ; 
Nor heights that gave the Armada's line, 
Thrilled with a joy so pure as thine. 

Bold was the ship thy name that bore ; 

Strength of the hills was hers ; 
Heart of the oaks thy pastures store, 
The pines that hear the north wind roar, 

The dark and tapering firs ; 



72 KEARSARGE, 

Nor Argonaut nor Viking knew 
Sublimer daring than her crew. 

And long as Freedom fii^s the soul 

Or mountains pierce the air, 
Her fame shall shine on honor's scroll ; 
Thy brow shall be the pilgrim's goal 

Uplifted broad and fair ; 
And, fi'om thy skies, insjDiring gales 
O'er future seas shall sweep our sails. 

Still summer keep thy pastures green. 
And clothe thy oaks and pines ; 

Brooks laugh thy rifted rocks between ; 

Snows fall serenely o'er the scene 
And veil thy lofty lines ; 

While crowned and peerless thou dost stand, 

The monarch of our mountain-land. 



MONADNOCK IN OCTOBER. 

Uprose Monadnock in the northern blue, 
A mighty minster builded to the Lord ! 
The setting sun his crimson radiance threw 
On crest, and steep, and wood, and valley sward, 
Blending their myriad hues in rich accord. 
Till like the wall of heaven it towered to view. 
Along its slope, where russet ferns were strewn 
And purple heaths, the scarlet maples flamed. 
And reddening oaks and golden birches shone, — 
Kesplendent oriels in the black pines framed, 
The pines that climb to woo the winds alone. 
And down its cloisters blew the evening breeze. 
Through courts and aisles ablaze with autumn 

bloom. 
Till shrine and portal thrilled to harmonies 
Now soaring, dying now in glade and gloom. 
And with the wind was heard the voice of 

streams, — 
Constant their Aves and Te Deums be, — 
Lone Ashuelot murmuring down the lea. 
And brooks that haste where shy Contoocook 

gleams 
Through groves and meadows, broadening to the 

sea. 



74 MONADNOCK IN OCTOBER. 

Then holy twilight fell on earth and air, 
Above the dome the stars hung faint and fair, 
And the vast minster hushed its shrines in 

prayer ; 
While all the lesser heights kept watch and 

ward 
About Monadnock builded to the Lord ! 



CONTOOCOOK RIVER.i*' 

Of all the streams that seek the sea 
By mountain pass, or sunny lea, 
Now where is one that dares to vie 
With clear Contoocook, swift and shy ? 
Monadnock's child, of snow-drifts born, 
The snows of many a winter morn 
And many a midnight dark and still, 
Heaped higher, whiter, day by day, 
To melt, at last, with suns of May, 
And steal, in tiny fall and rill, 
Down the long slopes of granite gray ; 
Or filter slow through seam and cleft 
When frost and storm the rock have reft, 
To bubble cool in sheltered springs 
Where the lone red-bird dips his wings, 
And the tired fox that gains their brink 
Stoops, safe from hound and horn, to drink. 
And rills and springs, grown broad and deep. 
Unite through gorge and glen to sweep 
In roaring brooks that turn and take 
The over-floods of pool and lake. 
Till, to the fields, the hills deliver 
Contoocook's bright and brimming river ! 



76 CONTOOCOOK RIVER. 

O have you seen, from Hillsboro' town 
How fast its tide goes hurrying down, 
With rapids now, and now a leap 
Past giant boulders, black and steep, 
Plunged in raid water, fain to keep 
Its current from the meadows green ? 
But, flecked with foam, it speeds along ; 
And not the birch-tree's silvery sheen, 
Nor the soft lull of murmuring pines, 
Nor hermit thrushes, fluting low, 
Nor ferns, nor cardinal flowers that glow 
Where clematis, the fairy, twines, 
Nor bowery islands where the breeze 
Forever whispers to the trees, 
Can stay its course, or still its song ; 
Ceaseless it flows till, round its bed, 
The vales of Henniker are spread. 
Their banks all set with golden grain. 
Or stately trees whose vistas gleam — 
A double forest — in the stream ; 
And, winding 'neath the pine-crowned hill 
That overhangs the village plain, 
By sunny reaches, broad and still. 
It nears the bridge that spans its tide — 
The bridge whose arches low and wide 
It ripples through — and should you lean 
A moment there, no lovelier scene 
On England's Wye, or Scotland's Tay, 
Would charm your gaze, a summer's day. 



CONTOOCOOE RIVER. 77 

O of what beauty 't is the giver — 
Contoocook's bright and brimming river ! 

And on it glides, by grove and glen, 
Dark woodlands, and the homes of men. 
With calm and meadow, fall and mill ; 
Till, deep and clear, its waters fill 
The channels round that gem of isles 
Sacred to captives' woes and wiles. 
And eager half, half eddying back. 
Blend with the lordly Merrimack ; 
And Merrimack whose tide is strong 
Rolls gently, with its waves along, 
Monadnock's stream that, coy and fair, 
Has come, its larger life to share, 
And to the sea doth safe deliver 
Contoocook's bright and brimming river ! 



THE RESCUE." 

(on the MEXICAN BORDER.) 

Now to the Lord Almighty — 

How wondrous are His ways I — 
And Our Lady of Guadakipe, 

The Holy Virgin, praise ! 
They pitied us in our anguish, 

And safe through thousand foes 
In the desert and the wilderness, 

Brought us to this repose ; 
And we will love and praise them 

TiU life itself shall close ! 

'T was a festal day in Larna, 

Our Blessed Lady's feast ; 
We were up and away to the church in the vale 

As dawn was red in the east, 
To catch the swell of the matin hymn, 

The first chant of the priest. 
We knelt beside the altar 

With its pictures brought from Spain ; 
The censers swung, the sweet bells rung, 

Our hearts made glad refrain ; 
And home we went at evening 

While the Angelus was tolled, 



THE RESCUE. 79 

And the peaks of the far Sierra 

Gleamed in the sunset gold. 
But just as we neared the hamlet. 

Where the shadows deepest lie, 
From a cleft in the woody hillside 

There came an awful cry, 
And lo ! the fierce Apaches 

In all their wild array 
Burst from the cedar thicket 

And bore us far away ! 

Our Lady must have listened 

To the shrieks that rent the air, 
When I saw my loved Juanita 

Seized by her shining hair, 
And her brave young brother, Leon, 

Thrust with a sharp spear back — 
So the cougar springs on the helpless deer 

In a lonely forest track ! 
All night we went in silence 

By stream and steep defile. 
To halt at morn on the lofty cliffs, 

From Larna many a mile ; 
To halt while our masters ate their fill 

Of the flesh of the mountain bear, 
Of mescal, acorns, cactus fruits 

Their prisoners might not share. 
How dread they were by light of day ! 

Painted from waist to crown. 
Their sashes blazoned with the stars. 

Their black locks streaming down ; 



80 THE RESCUE. 

With charms of lightning-riven twigs, 

And stones their foes must shun, 
And, borne at their belts, the sacred meal 

For offerings to the sun. 
In horror and despair we gazed, 

When, hush ! a bugle call 
Came winding, winding through the air, 

And up the mountain wall ! 
" The saints above watch o'er us ! " 

In Leon's ear I sighed ; 
" By this I know in the plain below 

Our gallant soldiers ride ! " 

The chief has caught the note ! His scouts 

Creep wary through the grass ; 
And stern with hate and fear he sets 

His braves to guard the pass ; 
All eyes are bent upon the plain. 

As hawks in mid-air hover ; — 
We breathe a prayer, and noiselessly 

Slip tlirough the dense pine cover ! 
And once again that bugle-call 

Is borne upon the wind, — 
Our Lady's grace ! — and on we speed 

To leave the fiends behind. 

Silent as startled quail we stole 

Beneath the kindly shade, 
Till we turned the brow of the jDrecipice 

And gained a quiet glade ; — 



THE BESCUE. 81 

What was that rustling in the brake ? 

Does the dire Apache follow ? 
It was only the partridge of the rock 

Scared from her sylvan hollow ; — 
Then on by crags where the tender lambs 

Of the mountain sheep are hid ; 
Down streams that dark with pool and fall 

Descend the rocks amid ; 
O'er sunny slopes whose blooms were gay 

As a garden bed in spring, 
With birds of every rainbow hue 

Like flowers that had taken wing ; — 
We heard the whir of the rattlesnake ; 

The timid fawn we found ; 
The stag, disturbed in his cool recess, 

Went by us with a bound ; 
The grizzly bear and the wildcat lurked 

In cave and jungle dim ; 
The panther, waiting for his prey, 

Couched on the pendent limb ; — 
I pressed the cross to my beating heart, 

And with many a murmured prayer 
We passed, unharmed, the serpent's coil, 

Unharmed, the wild beast's lair. 
At twilight, faint and chill and bruised, 

And torn by flint and thorn, 
On the edge of the plain, in the tule reeds, 

We sank to rest, forlorn. 
The vulture wheeled above the marsh ; 

We heard the gray wolf's cry ; 



82 THE RESCUE. 

But God was merciful — we slept 
Till the sun rose bright on high ; 

And then, O blessed Virgin ! 
The troops came riding by ! 

They halt ! we mount ! — then far we rode 

Through grove and cailon gray ; 
O'er the blinding sands of the weary waste 

Where the tired streams sink away ; 
Till just as the sunset splendor 

Was flooding plain and steep, 
And the wind, like a waft of paradise, 

Woke from its noonday sleep — 
Oh, never, never can we forget 

The joy of that glorious even — 
We saw the fort, with its starry flag, 

Fair as the gate of heaven ! 
And to the Lord Almighty, 

Who rules and guides our days, 
And the Saints, and the blessed Virgin, 

We lift our hearts in praise ! 



MERRIMACK RIVER AT ITS SOURCE. 

O Merrimack, strong Merrimack, 

All other streams may faint and lack, 

Exhale in clouds through dreary lands 

Or sink forlorn in desert sands ; 

New Hampshire's hills and island-sea 

Are sureties for thy constancy ! 

Pemigewasset leaps from the mountains 

Where the huge Stone Face looms cold and 

gray; 
Winnipesaukee fills at the fountains 
Ossipee guards and Chocorua — 
The sunny water that smiling lies 
With its isles like a path to Paradise ; 
And where Kearsarge uplifts his shrine 
They blend their deathless floods in thine. 



MERRIMACK RIVER AT ITS MOUTH. 

To-night I saw the Merrimack 

Go broadening, gleaming out to sea ; — 

The tide was low ; a cloudy rack 

Purple and crimson and sullen black 

Drifted o'er main and lea ; 

And now in shadow and now in sun, 

But placid and still as befitted one 

Whose life would be ended when day was 

done, — 
With a breeze from the north above it blowing 
And the strength of the hills in its silent flowing, 
Past the pines of Newbury town 
And the Salisbury marshes wide and brown, 
Over the bar the cliff-born river 
Lapsed into the sea's forever ! 



THE PORTSMOUTH SAILOR. 

Come back, O magical evenings 

Of Decembers long ago, 
When the north wind moaned at the windows, 

Herald of drifting snow ; 
But, within, the great logs glowing 

And the chimney's ruddy blaze 
Made all the room like the rosy fall 

Of summer's fairest days ! 

There, in a joyous circle, — 

Five girls and boys were we — 
About our grandame's chair we sat 

And listened to tales of the sea. 
For she had come from Portsmouth town, 

And her brothers were sailors tall ; 
She knew the lore of the fisher-folk, 

And every beach-bird's call ; 

And could tell us of storm, and wraith, and wreck, 

And ships becalmed on the line, 
And sunny lands whence the captains brought 

Olives and figs and wine, — 
Till our eyes were wide with wonder. 

And Robert would softly say, 



86 THE PORTSMOUTH SAILOR. 

" Now the story of our great-uncle 
The pirates carried away." 

" Yes," she would sigh, " it was William, 

The last of my brothers three ; 
Slender and straight as a light-house tower, 

And strong and brave was he. 
Our mother wept when he sang of the waves, 

And to hold him close was fain ; 
But he was a sailor born, and bent 

To rove the boundless main. 

"So he shipped on a gallant vessel, 

The " Cadiz," fleet and stout, 
And the gray March day she bore away 

The wildest winds were out. 
But he laughed at the gale and the gloomy sky 

As he saw her sails unfurl, 
And said he would bring me corals bright 

And our mother a brooch of pearl. 

" Dear noble lad ! I can see him yet 

As he stood at the mainmast's side, 
When the " Cadiz " down the river went 

With the wind and the ebbing tide. 
He waved his cap as she passed the forts 

And turned to her distant shore ; — 
Alas ! nor lad nor gallant prow 

Came up the river more ! 



THE PORTSMOUTH SAILOB. 87 

" Ah, well ; — with loving, lonely hearts 

We followed his foaming track, 
Looking aye for the golden morn 

That should bring our darling back ; — 
When with winter we heard the awful news, 

From a bark in Boston bay. 
That the Algerines had the " Cadiz " seized, 

And her crew were slaves of the Dey ! 

" ' But he lives,' said his stricken mother ; 

* He lives, and may come in peace ! ' 
And as one who would not be denied 

She prayed for his release ; 
While slow the seasons went their round 

Till thrice 't was March and May, 
And thrice the ships from the Indian isles 

In the harbor anchored lay. 

" Oh, happy for her she could not see 

Her boy on the burning plain. 
Scorn of the caravan southward bound 

For a Moorish master's gain ; — 
Through torrid noons and chilly nights 

Till that day of horror fell 
When a cloud came rolling up from the waste 

With a billow's surge and swell, 
And the dread simoom swept over their path 

A league from Tishlah's well ! 

" In flaming gusts, all fitfully, 
The blast of the desert blew ; 



88 THE PORTSMOUTH SAILOB. 

And the air grew heavy and hot and still 

As the darkness closer drew. 
They fled before its searching breath ; 

They crouched in trembling bands ; 
But it shut them in like a pall of fire, 

Outspread by demon hands ; — 
And, when it passed, that kneeling host 

Lay lifeless on the sands ! 

" And hark ! That eve his mother heard. 

By the door, the whip-poor-will's cry ; 
And, at midnight, the death-watch beating 

In the wall, her pillow by ; 
And the howl of the dog her sailor lad 

Left to her faithful care, 
As the wan moon sank before the dawn, 

Ring through the startled air ; 
And dreamed the cherry-tree's withered bough 

Was white with its early bloom ; — 
Then she knew in that drear and cruel land 

Her boy had found his tomb ! 

" Next moon a horde on plunder bent, 

Roaming the desert's heart, 
Saw the lone dead, and their treasures bore 

To far Timbuctoo's mart ; 
And told, in many an Arab tent. 

Of the fair-haired Christian slave 
Who nearest of all to the well had pressed. 

When the fierce wind heaped his grave. 



THE POBTSMOUTH SAILOR. 89 

" Nay, children ! Do not grieve so ! 

The angels could look down 
On still Sahara's burning plain, 

As on our Portsmouth town ; 
And he and his gentle mother. 

Denied one burial sod. 
This many a year have together dwelt 

an the Paradise of God ! ' " 

• ••••• 

Come back, O magical evenings 

Of Decembers long ago, — 
"When the north wind moaned at the windows, 

Herald of drifting snow ; 
But, warm in the rosy firelight. 

We sat at our grandame's knee, 
And listened with love and wonder 

To stories of over sea ! 



HORACE GREELEY. 

As if in lone Franconia one had said, 

" Alas ! the glorious monarch of the hills, 

Mount Washington, is fallen to the vale ! 

The direful echo all the silence fills ; 

The winds sweep down the gorge with bitter 

wail; 
The lesser heights rise trembling and dismayed, 
And the fond sun goes, clouded, to the west ; " — 
So to the street, the fireside, came the cry, 
*' Our King of Men, our boldest, gentlest heart, 
He whose pure front was nearest to the sky, 
Whose feet stood firmest on Eternal Right ; 
With his swift sympathies and giant might 
That sealed him for the martyr's, warrior's part. 
And led, through loss, to nobler victory — 
Lies low, to-day, in death's unchallenged rest ! " 

How we entombed him ! Not imperial Rome 
Gave her dead Ciesars sepulture so grand, 
Though gems and purple on the pyre were 

flung ! 
His tender requiem hushed the clamorous land ; 
And thus, by power lamented, poet sung, 



HORACE GREELEY. 91 

Through stricken, reverent crowds we bore him 

home 
When winter skies were fair and winds were 

still ! 
And for his fame, — while oceans guard our 

shores 
And mountains midway lift their peaks of snow 
To the clear azure where the eagle soars ; 
While peace is sweet, and the world yearns 

again 
To hear the angel-strain, " Good will to men ; " 
While toil brings honor, virtue vice deplores, 
And liberty is precious, — it shall grow. 
And the great future with his spirit fill. 
Nov. 29, 1872. 



Still will the Christmas bells be sweet 

Amid December's gloom ; 
The Easter lilies, fair and fleet, 

Bring Eden with their bloom ; 
And Advent, Resurrection, shine 
Through all the years, supreme, divine. 



THE QUEEN OF THE YEAE. 

When suns are low, and nights are long, 

And winds bring wild alarms. 
Through the darkness comes the queen of the 
year 

In all her peerless charms, — 
December, fair and holly-erowned, 

With the Christ-child in her arms. 

The maiden months are a stately train — 

Veiled in the spotless snow, 
Or decked with the bloom of Paradise 

What time the roses blow. 
Or wreathed with the vine and the yellow wheat 

When the noons of harvest glow. 

But O the joy of the rolling year, 

The queen with peerless charms. 
Is she who comes through the waning light 

To keep the world from harms, — 
December, fair and holly-crowned. 

With the Christ-child in her arms» 



CHRISTMAS EVE AT BETHLEHEM. 

The Chi'ist-thorn rustles in the hedge, 

The chill wind sighs by Kedron's edge — 

The snow-wind blown from Lebanon ; 

And though, o'er Moab's mountain wall, 

The stars in orient splendor climb 

As on that rarest night of time 

When Jesus for the world was won, 

Yet never Bethlehem's height or vale, 

Though shepherds watch till stars grow pale — 

Nay, till the latest evening fall — 

Will see an angel's radiant flight 

Burn through the splendor of the night, 

Or hear that seraph-song again, 

" On earth be peace, good will toward men ! " 

Only the Christ-thorn in the hedge. 

The chill wind's sigh by Kedron's edge — 

The snow-wind blown from Lebanon. 

White, through the gloom, the convent towers, 

Where tearful pilgrims count the hours 

With Aves until midnight's chime 

Shall usher in the day sublime, 

Thronging the nave of Helena ; 

Or seek the crypt, their holiest quest, 



CHRISTMAS EVE AT BETHLEHEM, 97 

To read upon its stones imprest, 
" Hie Jesus Christus natus est," 
And kneel to kiss the pavement star ! 
The silver lamps swing to and fro ; 
The monks in long procession go, 
Slow-winding round the altar stair ; 
But crypt and shrine are mute and bare ; 
The Christ is gone, the glory fled 
That shone above his manger-bed. 
And the pale monks but mourn him there. 
Without, beside the guarded gate — 
The gate that fronts the rising sun — - 
No lordly emirs reverent wait 
With gifts to hail the new-born King ; 
No shepherds from their pastures run 
To see the babe the angels sing, 
But all is hushed and desolate ; 
Only the Christ-thorn in the hedge, 
The chill wind's sigh by Kedron's edge — 
The snow-wind blown from Lebanon. 

And are we then forgot, bereft, 
Because no host the sky has cleft ? 
No glory shone above the plain 
Where burst the high, seraphic strain ? 
No wise men journeyed o'er the wold 
With myrrh and frankincense and gold 
To greet the Babe of Paradise 
In the low cradle where he lies ? 
Nay ! what do we with song or gem ? 



98 CHRISTMAS EVE AT BETHLEHEM. 

Since that immortal night went by 
The whole earth is our Bethlehem ; 
Hosannas ring from every sky ! 
In forest glade, on billowy main, 
Judea's height, Nebraska's plain, — 
By any shore or mount or sea 
Where faith and hope and love abide 
And self is lost in sacrifice, 
There the celestial gates swing wide 
And heaven descends to human eyes ; 
There Christ the Lord is born again ; 
There is his new Nativity ! 

Who sorrows for a vanished dawn 
When east and west proclaim the sun ? 
Welcome be Bethlehem's silent lawn, 
Its songless skies and shadows dun, 
The Christ-thorn rustling in the hedge, 
The chill wind's sigh by Kedron's edge — 
The snow-wind blown from Lebanon ! 



THE WINTER SOLSTICE. 

What is the time of the year ? 

What is the hour of the day ? 
Later at morn and sooner at eve 

The pale stars shine alway ; 
And the low sun drifts to the south, 

So wan that at height of noon 
We hardly know if the dun light 
Be the parting glow of the sunlight 

Or the gleam of the risen moon ; 
And ever through shade and fleeting shine 

We hear the bleak wind's rune : 
" Alas, alas for the summer fled, 

And earth and sky so gray ! " 

for the odor of violets 

That sprang with the April rain, 
And the breath of the rose and the lily 

That long in their graves have lain ! 
And O for the orchard's wealth of bloom, 

And the wheat-field's waving gold ! — 
My heart is faint for the glory 
Of harvest moons, and the story 

The balmy zephyrs told ! 



100 THE WINTER SOLSTICE. 

How shall we live now earth is bare, 

And the sun himself is cold, 
And the blast of the bitter north goes by 

Bemoaning wood and plain ? 

Wait ! there 's a thrill in the air ! 

See ! in the south forlorn 
The great sun stays his wandering beams, 

And a new year finds its morn ! 
The stars are a-watch, and the moon ; 

The wailing wind drops low ; 
There 's a murmur of daffodil meadows, 
And of songs in the sylvan shadows, 

And banks where the violets blow ! 
Let fires be lit, let shrines be decked. 

And joy be lord of woe ! — 
The sun, victorious, mounts the sky, 

And God for earth is born ! 



WAITING FOR EASTER. 

Hark ! the clarion March wind ! its wild, defiant 
greeting 
Rouses moor and forest, rouses hill and sea — 
Stormy as the bugles that call when hosts are 
meeting, 
Rich as notes from Alp to Alp when horns 
make jubilee ! 

Down the darkening sunset a single star is shin- 

Lost as clouds drift landward off the ocean 
dim ; 
Dreary rise the mountains, against the gray re- 
clining, 

Wan as ghosts that silent steal where sweUs 
a funeral hymn. 

Hark ! the stately chorus ! away, my soul's de- 
jection ! 
Songs of summer warble through the glorious 
strain ; 
Every ringing cadence is a blast of resurrection. 
Bold as blown by Israfil across some burial 
plain ! 



102 WAITING FOR EASTER. 

Sturdier stand the maples as past them rolls its 
paean ; 
Thrill with joy the elm- boughs, swaying light 
and free ; 
Back to dell and garden come dreams of scents 
Sabean, 
Back to brook and river -tide the splendors of 
the sea. 

" Welcome ! " sigh the leaf -buds, though chill its 
rough caressing ; 
Hid in snow the crocus lifts a heart of gold ; 
May-flower and anemone know well its wrath is 
blessing. 
Flushing faint for happiness in woodland moss 

and mould. 

« 

Hark ! the clarion March wind ! its wild, defiant 
greeting 
Rouses moor and forest, rouses hill and sea — 
Stormy as the bugles that call when hosts are 
meeting, 
Rich as notes from Alp to Alp when horns 
make jubilee ! 

Wind of life ! sweep onward ; bring a world 
diviner ; — 
Laughing meadows, mountains soft in purple 
air ; 



WAITING FOB EASTEB. 103 

Rosier dawns and twilights, suns and moons be- 
nigner, 
All that heaven and earth can give to fashion 
April fair. 

Nay, bring nobler courage ; faith that never fal- 
ters; 
Bear our griefs with winter o'er the seas 
away ; — 
So in hope and gladness, beside our hearths and 
altars. 
We will wait the coming of the blessed Easter 
Day! 



EASTER MORNING. 

The fasts are done ; the Aves said ; 

The moon has filled her horn ; 
And in the solemn night I watch 

Before tlie Easter morn. 
So pure, so still the starry heaven, 

So hushed the brooding air, 
I could hear the sweep of an angel's wings 

If one should earthward fare ; — 
Great Michael with his flaming sword, 
Sandalphon bearing to the Lord 

Some heart-cry of despair. 

But since the sunset glow went out 

And the fitful wind grew still, 
No sound has stirred the waiting night. 

No flash lit sky or hill. 
Gabriel nor Uriel speeds to tell 

Some heavenly boon is won ; 
To other spheres in the airy deep 

Their shining pathways run, 
And, left of angel ministries. 
Alone upon celestial seas 

Earth circles round the sun. 



EASTER MORNING. 105 

Yet joy is here, for woods and fields 

Thrill to the kiss of spring ; 
The brooks go laughing down the glens, 

The birds for gladness sing ; 
In forest dells the wind flowers wave ; 

The earliest violets blow ; 
And soon will come the carnival 

Of orchard flush and snow, 
When air is balm and blossoms fall 
As if the blessed angels all 

Brought Paradise below. 

Alas for April song and bloom ! 

My eyes are dim with tears 
As I think of the dead no spring will wake 

Through all the circling years ! 
With broken hearts we laid them down ; 

We followed them with prayers ; 
And warm and true for aye we keep 

Our love and trust with theirs ; 
But silence shrouds them evermore, 
Nor sun, nor star, nor sea, nor shore, 

A pitying message bears. 

O for a rift in the arching heaven ! 

A gleam of the jasper walls ! 
A single note of the holy hymn 

That ceaseless swells and falls ! 
Their graves are cold, and they never come 

When the evening sun is low, 



106 EASTER MORNING. 

Nor sit with us one happy hour 

In the firelight's fading glow ; — 
And I dream till my eyes are dim with tears, 
And all my life o'erpowered with fears, 
As the night-watches go. 

Hark ! 't is the west wind blowing free, 

Swift herald of the dawn ; 
Faint murmurs answer from the wood ; 

The night will soon be gone. 
Sad soul ! shall day from darkness rise. 

And the rose unfold from the sod, 
And the bare, brown hills grow beautiful 

When May their slopes has trod, — 
While they for whom the sun shone fair, 
And rose and bird rejoiced the air, 

Sleep on, forgot of God ? 

Depart, drear visions of the night ! 

We are the dead, not they ! 
High in God's mansions of delight 

They greet immortal day. 
Look out ! The sky is flushed with gold 

In glad, celestial warning ; 
The cloudy bars are backward rolled, 

And, gloom and shadows scorning, 
O'er grief and death victorious. 
Above all glories glorious, 

Comes up the Easter morning ! 



EASTER BELLS. 

Lent was dreary and late that year ; 

April to May was going ; 
But the loitering moon refused to round, 

And the wild south-east was blowing. 

Day by day, from my window high, 

I watched, a lonely warder, 
For a building bird in the garden-trees 

Or a flower in the sheltered border. 

But I only heard the chilly rain 

On the roof of my chamber beating. 

Or the wild sea-wind to the tossing boughs 
Its wail of wreck repeating ; 

And said, " Ah me ! 't is a weary world 
This cheerless April weather ; 

The beautiful things will droop and die, 
Blossom and bird together." 

At last the storm was spent. I slept. 
Lulled by the tired wind's sighing, — 

To wake at morn with the sunshine full 
On floor and garden lying ; 



108 EASTER BELLS. 

And lo ! the hyacinth buds were blown ; 

A robin was blithely singing ; 
The cherry-blooms by the wall were white, 

And the Easter bells were ringing ! 

It was long ago, but the memory lives ; 

And in all life's Lenten sorrows. 
When tempests of grief and trouble beat 

And I dread the dark to-morrows, 

I think of the garden after the rain ; 

And hope to my heart comes singing, 
" At morn the cherry-blooms will be white, 

And the Easter bells be ringing ! " 



To the minstrel said the king, 

" Sing you mournful songs or glad ? 

" Nay, sire, 't is of life I sing ; 
Gay to-day, to-morrow sad." 

" Minstrel, tell us not of tears ; 

Dulcet notes to joy belong." 
" Nay, sire, he who sorrow fears 

Will not hear the sweetest song." 



HEAVEN, LORD, I CANNOT LOSE. 

Now summer finds her perfect prime ; 

Sweet blows the wind from western calms ; 
On every bower red roses climb ; 

The meadows sleep in mingled balms. 
Nor stream, nor bank the wayside by, 

But lilies float and daisies throng ; 
Nor space of blue and sunny sky 

That is not cleft with soaring song. 
O flowery morns, O tuneful eves, 

Fly swift ! my soul ye cannot fill I 
Bring the ripe fruit, the garnered sheaves. 

The drifting snows on plain and hill. 
Alike, to me, fall frosts and dews ; 
But, Heaven, O Lord, I cannot lose ! 

Warm hands, to-day, are clasped in mine ; 

Fond hearts my mirth or mourning share ; 
And, over hope's horizon line. 

The future dawns, serenely fair. 
Yet still, though fervent vow denies, 

I know the rapture will not stay ; 
Some wind of grief or doubt will rise 

And turn my rosy sky to gray. 



112 HEAVEN, O LORD, I CANNOT LOSE. 

I shall awake, in rainy morn, 

To find my hearth left lone and drear ; 
Thus, half in sadness, half in scorn, 

I let my life burn on as clear 
Though friends grow cold or fond love woos ; 
But Heaven, O Lord, I cannot lose ! 

In golden hours the angel Peace 

Comes down and broods me with her wings ; 
I gain from sorrow sweet release ; 

I mate me with divinest things ; 
When shapes of guilt and gloom arise 

And far the radiant angel flees, — 
My song is lost in mournful sighs, 

My wine of triumph left but lees ; 
In vain for me her pinions shine. 

And pure, celestial days begin ; 
Earth's passion-flowers I still must twine, 

Nor braid one beauteous lily in. 
Ah ! is it good or ill I choose ? 
But Heaven, O Lord, I cannot lose ! 

So wait I. Every day that dies 

With flush and fragrance born of June, 
I know shall more resplendent rise 

Where summer needs nor sun nor moon. 
And every bud, on love's low tree. 

Whose mocking crimson flames and falls, 
In fullest flower I yet shall see 

High-blooming by the jasper walls. 



HEAVEN, O LOBD, I CANNOT LOSE. 113 

Nay, every sin that dims my days, 
And wild regrets that veil the sun, 

Shall fade before those dazzling rays. 
And my long glory be begun ! 

Let the years come to bless or bruise ; 

Thy Heaven, O Lord, I shall not lose ! 



BORN OF THE SPIRIT. 

She called me a moment before, 
And smiled, as I entered the door. 

In her gentle way ; 
A sigh ... a droop of the head . . . 
And something forever had fled, 

And she was but clay ! 

Her hand was yet clasped in mine ; 
And bright, in the golden shine, 

Her brown hair fell ; 
But the marble Psyche there 
As soon would have heard my prayer, 

My wild farewell. 

'Twas the hush of an autumn noon, 
So clear that the waning moon 

Was a ghost in the sky ; 
Not a leaf on the lindens swayed. 
And even the brook in the glade 

Ran, noiseless, by. 

What had gone from the room. 
Leaving the sunshine gloom. 
The soft air chill ? 



BOBN OF THE SPIBIT. 115 

If the tiniest bird had flown, 
Its flight had a shadow thrown 
On lawn and rill ; 

But neither a sound nor sight 
Disturbed the calm or the light 

Of the noontide air ; 
Yet the friend I loved was as far 
As a ghostly moon or star, 

From my call and care. 

Dead, with her hand in mine ! 
Dead, in the golden shine 

Of the autumn day ! 
Dead, and no note in heaven. 
Nor a gleam of white wings given, 

To mark her way ! 

And my heart went up in the cry, 
" How did the swift soul fly ? 

What life inherit ? " . . . 
Then the wind blew sweet and was gone . . . 
And a voice said, " So is one 

Born of the Spirit,^' 



LIGHTS AND SHADOWS. 

See how the shifting lights and shadows fall 
Athwart the path where young leaves take the 

sun ; 
Blent in a wavering, tangled maze they run, 
As blows the wind across the orchard wall, , 
So fleet, so faint, that careless play seems aU, — 
Yet perfect law imprints them, every one. 
And tides might sooner seek the moon to shun 
Than leaves this instant limning to forestall. 
Thus do the lights and shadows of the soul 
Unerringly portray its good and ill ; 
Each aim, each longing, fraught with joy or dole, 
Traces an image on life's pathway still, 
And the swift pictures are our judgment-scroll 
Whether with shine or shade the hours we fill. 



THE CBY OF JOB. 117 



THE CRY OF JOB. 

" But I will maintain mine own ways before him." 

Lord, Thou knowest my heart is pure ; 

Lo, I open it all to Thee ; 
The light of thine eyes I dare endure ; 

Come with thy judgment day to me ! 
Hour nor moment I will not hide 

Of all I have lived beneath the sun ; 
What to me if the world deride ? 

Into thy face I look alone. 

For I am thine — thy very own ; 

Thou hast fashioned me, body and soul ; 
Hither I sped by thy strong winds blown, 

And hence must fly to thy farthest goal. 
Is the wave appalled by the mighty sea ? 

Does the sunbeam dread the noontide blaze ? 
And shall I, who live and move in Thee, 

Tremble to prove thy blame or praise ? 

What is my life ? alas, alas, 

Fain I would fathom it, fain forget ! 
But well Thou knowest I could not pass 

The bounds which Thou, thyself, didst set ; 
And that ever, through wrong and wreck and pain, 

I have striven to hold my course to Thee ; 
Shall mine be the anguish and not the gain ? — 

Come with thy judgment day to me ! 



DAILY DYING 

Not in a moment drops the rose 

That in a summer garden grows ; — 

A robin sings beneath the tree 
A twiUght song of ecstasy, 
And the red, red leaves at its fragrant heart, 

Trembling so in delicious pain. 
Fall to the ground with a sudden start 

And the grass is gay with a crimson stain ; 

And a honey-bee, out of the fields of clover, 

Heavily flying the garden over, 

Brushes the stem as it passes by, 

And others fall where the heart-leaves lie ; 

And air and dew, ere night is done, 

Have stolen the petals, every one. 

And sunset's gleam of gorgeous dyes 
Ne'er with one shadow fades away. 

But slowly o'er those radiant skies 

There steals the evening cold and gray ; 
And amber and violet linger still 
When stars are over the eastern hill. 

The maple does not shed its leaves 
In one tempestuous scarlet rain, 



DAILY DYING. 119 

But softly, when the south wind grieves. 
Slow-wandering over wood and plain, 
One by one they waver through 
The Indian's summer's hazy blue, 
And drop, at last, on the forest mould, 
Coral and ruby and burning gold. 

Our death is gi'adual, like to these ; 

We die with every waning day ; 
There is no waft of sorrow's breeze 

But bears some heart-leaf slow away! 

Up and on to the vast To Be 

Our life is going eternally ! 
Less of earth than we had last year 

Throbs in your veins and throbs in mine, 
But the way to heaven is growing clear, 

While the gates of the city fairer shine ; 

And the day that our latest treasures flee. 

Wide they will open for you and me ! 



O LOVED AND LOST. 

I SIT beside the sea this autumn day, 

When sky and tide are ravishingly blue, 
And melt into each other. Down the bay 
The stately ships drift by so still and slow, 
That, on the horizon's verge, I scarce may know 
Which be the sails along the wave that glow. 
And which the clouds that float the azure 
through. 

From beds of goldenrod and asters steal 

The south winds, soft as any breath of May ; 
High in the sunny air the white gulls wheel. 
As noiseless as the cloud they poise below ; 
And, in the hush, the light waves come and go 
As if a spell entranced them, and their flow 
Echoed the beat of oceans far away. 

O Loved and Lost ! can you not stoop to me 
This perfect morn, when heaven and earth are 
one ? 
The south winds breathe of you ; I only see 
(Alas, the vision sweet can naught avail !) 
Your image in the cloud, the wave, the sail ; 
And heed nor calm, nor storm, nor bliss, nor bale, 
Remembering you have gone beyond the sun. 



I 



O LOVED AND LOST. 121 

One look into your eyes ; one clasp of hands ; 

One murmured " Lo, I love you as before ; " 
And I would give you to your viewless lands, 
And wait my time with never tear nor sigh ; — 
But not a whisper comes from earth or sky, 
And the sole answer to my yearning cry 

Is the faint wash of waves along the shore. 

Lord ! dost Thou see how dread a thing is death 

When silence such as this is all it leaves ? — 
To watch in agony the parting breath 
Till the fond eyes are closed, the dear voice still ; 
And know that not the wildest prayer can thrill 
Thee to awake them, but our grief must fill 
Alike the rosy morns, the rainy eves. 

Ah ! Thou dost see ; and not a pang is vain ! — 

Some joy of every anguish must be born ; 
Else this one planet's weight of loss and pain 
Would stay the stars in sympathetic woe, 
And make the suns move pale, and cold, and 

slow, 
Till all was black and void, thy throne below. 
And night shut down without a gleam of 
morn. 

But mark ! the sun goes radiant to his goal 
While winds make music o'er the laughing 
sea; 
And, with his set, the starry host will roll 



122 O LOVED AND LOST. 

Celestial splendors over mead and main ; 
Lord ! can thy worlds be glad, and death en- 
chain ? 
Nay ! 't is but crowning for immortal reign 
In the pure realm where all abide with thee. 

What star has seen the sun at cloudless noon ? 

What chrysalis knows aught of wings that 
soar ? — 
O blessed souls ! how can I hope the boon 
Of look or word from you, the glorified, 
Until for me the shining gates swing wide ? - — 
Welcome the day when the great deeps divide, 

And we are one in life for evermore ! 



THE TRYST OF SOULS. 

Low hung the moon, the wmd was still, 
As slow I climbed the midnight hill, 
And passed the ruined garden o'er, 
And gained the barred and silent door ; 
Sad-welcomed by the lingering rose 
That, startled, shed its waning snows. 

The bolt flew back with sudden clang ; 

I entered ; wall and rafter rang ; 

Down dropped the moon, and, clear and high, 

September's wind went wailing by ; — 

" Alas ! " I sighed, " the love and glow 

That lit this mansion, long ago I " 

And groping up the threshold stair. 
And past the chambers cold and bare, 
I sought the room where glad, of yore, 
We sat the blazing fire before. 
And heard the tales a father told. 
Till glow was gone and evening old. 

Where were those rosy children three ? 
The boy beneath the moaning sea ; 
Blithe Margaret, down where violets hide. 
Slept, tranquil, by that father's side ; 



124 THE TRYST OF SOULS. 

And I, alone, a pilgrim still, 

Was left to climb the midnight hill. 

My hand was on the latch, when lo ! 
'T was lifted from within ! and slow, 
Dawned on my heart its dearest dream ; - 
Within I saw the wood-fire gleam, 
And smiling, waiting, beckoning there, 
My father, in his ancient chair I 

the long rapture, perfect rest, 

As close he clasped me to his breast ! 
Put back the braids the wind had blown ; 
Said I had like my mother grown ; 
And bade me tell him, frank as she, 
All the lone years had brought to me. 
• 

What cared I then ? — his hand in mine, 

1 tasted joy serene, divine, 

And saw my griefs unfolding fair 
As flowers in June's enchanted air. 
So warm his words, so soft his sighs. 
Such tender lovelight in his eyes, 

" O Death ! " I cried, " if these be thine, 
For me the asphodels entwine ! 
Fold me within thy blessed calm ; 
Leave on my lips thy kiss of balm ; 
And let me slumber, pillowed low, 
With Margaret where the violets blow ! " 



THE TRYST OF SOULS. 125 

And still we talked. O'er cloudy bars 
Orion bore his pomp of stars ; 
Within, thie wood-fire fainter glowed ; 
Weird on the wall the shadows showed ; 
Till, in the east, a pallor born 
Told midnight melting into morn 

Then nearer to his side I prest. 
Afraid to lose my angel-guest ; — 
A glance, a sigh — we did not speak — 
Fond kisses on my brow and cheek, 
A sudden sense of rapture flown. 
And in the dawn I sat alone ! 

'T is true his rest this many a year 

Has made the village church-yard dear ; 

'T is true his stone is graven fair, 

*' Here lies, remote from mortal care ; " — 

I cannot tell how both may be, 

But well I know he talked with me ! 

And oft, when other fires are low, 
I sit within that midnight glow ; 
My head upon his shoulder leant. 
His tender glances downward bent, 
And win the dream to sweet delay 
Till stars and shadows yield to day. 



THE HEAVENS. 

What Alps of clouds ! The distant, airy deep 
Is lightning-rent, and fleecy mountains tower, 
Pile over pile, and drift across the blue, 
Wild - driven by the warm, fierce wind that 

blows 
From fiery Mars ; while, through their rifts and 

chasms. 
Shines the pure ether of the outer realm, 
And links the lone earth to her sister sj^heres. 
Glorious ! The Universe is mine the while ! 
Fleet Mercury, companion of the sun, 
And loitering Neptune with his darkened years, 
And all the myriad, myriad worlds that roll 
Beyond our vision dim, but seen of God, 
And heard in symphonic^ about his throne. 
And if, above the splendor of these cliffs, 
Some white-winged angel should this moment 

poise, 
And in a voice of luring sweetness sing, 
" Come hither, hither with the seraphim ! " 
I should as lightly follow as the child, 
Who, tired of silent books and narrow walls, 
Hears from the garden bowers his mother call, 
And runs to meet her, knowing they shall roam 



THE HEAVENS. 127 

Through pleasant woodlands and by singing 

streams. 
Are not the heavens God's pastures of delight, 
Whither He leads us when our tasks are done ? 
Give placid, brooding skies to Time and Love, — 
Fond human love that nestles in the vale 
And shuns the wide horizon and the storm ; 
But, for Immortal Birth, a sky like this. 
Upheaved, tumultuous, with a rushing wind 
Swept from the farthest circle of the stars 
To bear the rapt, exultant soul away ! 

Or such an evening as I saw in June : 
All day the rain had fallen, but the clouds 
Lifted at twilight, and to eastward rolled ; 
And, from wet woods and fields, a silver mist 
Rose silently, half zenith high, and robed 
The near horizon, mountains, meadows, groves, 
In the soft lustre of its filmy veil. 
So light, so thin, that through its shroud the 

pines 
Loomed darkly, like the ghost of Loda seen 
By moonlight on the hills of Inistore. 
When, lo ! above the still expanse, a cloud 
Lit by the beams of the departed sun ! 
A ship of flame with crimson sails and masts 
All fiery bright ; God's glowing galleon, 
Celestial-freighted for some Eden-shore. 
And ravished, breathless, fain I would have 

cried. 



128 THE HEAVENS. 

" Ho ! tarry ! hither turn thy gleaming prow, 
And take my soul across the silver sea ! " 

Or an October sunset in the hills : 
The west was banked with clouds ; the sun ob- 
scured ; 
When, suddenly, just on the horizon's verge, 
He burst forth in farewell. O wondrous change ! 
The south was sapphire through a filmy haze ; 
The north, the clear, pale, lucent green of waves 
That break in foam upon a shelving shore ; 
The dull, gray bars were palace-pillars tall, 
Of gorgeous marbles, jasper, porphyry, 
And flawless, blushing granite such as floats 
From far Syene quarries down the Nile. 
And domes of purest gold above them shone, 
And towers with many a banner burning high, — 
Purple and scarlet on an amber sheen, — 
While walls of topaz and great rubies blazed, 
As flashed the sun or blew the shifting breeze 
Through the wide courts and up the columned 

aisles. 
Nay, 't was no earthly palace, but the Bride, — 
The New Jerusalem from God come down, — 
And I had but to cross the close-reapt fields, 
And pass the brook and gain the mountain's 

brow, 
To swing the gate of pearl and enter in, 
Forever done with death and pain and tears ! 



HOW LITTLE OF OUR LIFE. 

(After Reading of the Earthquakes in Spain, 
Dec, 1887.) 

How little of our life this earth must hold, 

How slight, at most, in the great thought of 
God, 
When He can see such awful ruin rolled 
From out its depths, and yawning gulfs enfold 

His helpless creatures, till the very sod 
Implores his mercy, though his love be cold ! 
And while the shores yet reel where terror 
trod, 
Across them sweep the ruthless hurricane 

With thunder's roar and lightning's fiery 
sword. 
Till shrine and home lie prone upon the plain ! — 
Earthquake and stormy wind fulfil his word. 

How little of our life this earth must keep, 
How swift that life must fly to fairer spheres 

When He can rend it thus, though we may weep 

To sink so soon in death's relentless sleep, 

And pray to pass in peace our human years — 

To greet the sun, and love, and build, and reap 
The harvests we have sown in toil and tears ! 



130 HOW LITTLE OF OUR LIFE. 

For, like the leaves that drop in storm or calm, 
Some to the mould, some whirled ia wreck 
abroad, 
Helpless and crushed we fall, while nature's 
psalm 
Rises, unsaddened, to the ear of God. 

This life ! what is it but a single bloom 

In the wide summer's wilderness of flowers ? 
The faintest star of all that light the gloom — 
One shuttle-cast of God's untiring loom — 
One flying moment in immortal hours ? 
And death, that we bewail as bitter doom, 
What but the gift of unimagined dowers ? 
God were not God else ! . . . Let us welcome, 

then, 
The smiting angel, and our fears assuage ! — 
How sharp soe'er his summons, ciy " Amen ! " 
And go to gain the nobler heritage. 



THE FLIGHT OF SOULS. 

Like the rise and set of the starry host 

Earth's myriads come and go ; 
Yet whence we speed through the infinite spaces — 
Speed as the light and leave no traces — 
And what the calm, on the pale, cold faces, 
And whither we pass to our shining places 

By far celestial isle and coast, 
O Lord, we may not know. 

But we are thine, and thy peace descends 

As our hearts cry out to Thee ; 
" Peace ! " sigh the winds o'er the lone graves 

blowing, — 
And we know that the stars the azure strewing, 
And the souls whose life is thy bestowing, 
Forever and ever to Thee are going — 
To the Love that rise and set attends, 

And the Glory that is to be ! 



A PRAYER. 

Let me not die, O Lord, till I have done 
Some deed to bless the world wherein I dwell ! 
Spoken some word that when I leave the sun 
In other hearts the tide of life shall swell, 
And, like a clarion, call to high emprise. 
Though hushed for aye my voice and closed my 
eyes ! 

For I have been so glad, thy blue below, 
That earth and air kept carnival with me ; 
From banks of rose the winds that softest blow 
Bore my light bark across a halcyon sea ; 
And the swift year through all its days and 

nights 
Blent fairest hopes with dear, fulfilled delights. 

And I have swept into such dread abysms, 
Tossed with such tides on sorrow's wintry main, 
That neither altar-fires nor holy chrisms 
Could light my soul or bring a balm for pain ; 
But, back from every sheltering harbor blown, 
Through the great darkness I have groped alone. 



A PBAYER. 133 

And shall I pass, and all this life of mine 
Sink voiceless, fruitless, in oblivion's wells ? — 
I who have drained earth's rue and quaffed its 

wine. 
Whose joys have touched the heavens, whose 

griefs the hells — 
Die as the wind upon some alien shore 
That sings and sighs, then falls to wake no more ? 



A TRUANT FROM EDEN. 

In a mazy, sunlit garden, 

Where was neither watch nor warden. 

But the butterflies and bees 

Rifling the laburnum-trees ; 

Where lilies pale and purple phlox 

Bent above the bordering box, 

And clustering pinks and crimson roses 

Made fragrant even the orchard closes - 

There one blissful hour I strayed 

With the boy they said was laid 

Forever 'neath the yew-tree's shade — 

Harold, with his summers seven ! 

The tower-clock was chiming eleven 

As I saw him down the stair. 

With his blue eyes, and chestnut hair 

Backward from his forehead blown 

By the wind, that made such moan 

When we lost him, ('t was a day 

In dreary March he went away) 

But that now, in glad surprise, 

Breathed a strain of Paradise. 

How I caught him to my heart ! 
" Darling ! naught again shall part 
You and me, you and me ! " 
Thrice he kissed me ; then in glee, 



A TRUANT FROM EDEN. 135 

Down tlie winding path he sped, — 
So he was wont of old to play — 

I could see his shining head 
Bright the darkling houghs between, 
As if a sunbeam glanced that way ; 

While I followed where he led, 
Followed still, through gold and green. 
By grove and walk, his dancing feet ; 
And as he ran, now fairy-fleet. 
Now from some gloom emerging slow, 

Still beckoning, stiil eluding me. 
His cheek outvied the rose's glow. 

His voice, the robin's minstrelsy. 

And then, and then, — God pity me 
That still my lonely days glide on — - 
I know not how, but he was gone ! 
Unseen, had vanished utterly ! 
Viewless as evening zephyrs pass 
That softly sway the meadow grass ; 
Silent as April sunlight goes, 
When a black cloud, relentless, throws 

Its shadow over lawn and tree ! 
And calling, flying where he fled, 
I passed the lilies, drooping, dead, 
And, breathless, gained the vacant stair ; — 

The sun shone wan as winter moon ; 
A chill wind blew the rose-tree bare. 
Strewing its blossoms o'er the stone ; 
And he was gone, and I alone. 

As sharp the clock rang out for noon ! 



STANLEY WARE. 

Now as sinks the New Year's srm, 
Fadeless Day for him is won ! 
Closed his eyes in dreamless rest ; 
Crossed his hands upon his breast ; 
Still the tireless, bounding feet 
Done with garden, stair, and street. 
Hushed the voice that used to ring 
Clear as robin's note in spring ; 
There he lies, so calm, so fair, 
All that 's left of Stanley Ware ! 

" O Mamma ! 't is travelers three 

Baby, Mary, I will be ! " — 

So he said but y ester-night. 

Listening with a boy's delight 

To some tale of over sea. 

Now the parting winds blow free I 

Now his bark is launched from shore. 

All its sails set, to explore 

Tranquil oceans, islands rare, 

As God pilots — Stanley Ware ! 

Would we call him back to earth ? 
Back from liis immortal birth ? 



STANLEY WARE. 137 

Wish the bark those tides have swung 
Tossed our gulfs and shoals among ? 
Let our tempests beat the sails 
Spread to heaven's ambrosial gales ? 
Nay, sweet Voyager ! for thee 
Glorious shines the crystal sea ! 
Farthest deeps thy prow may dare, 
Angel-convoyed, — Stanley Ware ! 

Darling ! -^hen the sun and rain 
Make our cold earth bright again, 
Violet, rose, anemone. 
Loveliest blooms will symbol thee ; 
Song of birds in forest shrine 
Bring us still some tone of thine. 
And at last will dawn the day 
When we, too, shall launch away ; — 
O what bliss with thee to share 
Hours celestial — Stanley Ware ! 
Jan. 1, 1872. 



ALONE WITH GOD. 

Beside the bier I watched his rest divine, 

While sunset faded and the moon rose fair 
To light the chamber gloom with mellow shine, 

And kiss the lips that love would hardly dare ; 
And through the lattice, from the meadows, came 

The south wind like a seraph, fluting low. 
And fanned his cheek, and almost breathed his 
name. 

And waved the pall's weird fringes to and 
fro. 

Oh, life I would have given for look or word ! 

Alas, alas, he could not hear my cry ! 
Caress nor prayer his wan, cold slumber stirred ; 

The wind and moonlight were as dear as I ! 
Done were our mingled days of joy and care ; 

Parted the paths we had together trod ; 
He on his bier, and I beside him there — 

Each, in the stillness, was alone with God. 



"COME UNTO ME." 

The sweetest words that ever fell 

By mount or wave, in shrine or cell, 

Or, altar-chanted, stole through aisle 

The tortured heart from pain to wile, 

Are these the Master spoke when free 

He walked thy shores, fair Galilee ! 

And called his burdened followers there 

With tender love and pitying prayer : 

Whoe'er ye be, alien or neighbor, father, mother, 

maiden, with grief and care opprest, 
Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy 

laden, and I will give you rest ! 

What glorious hope uplifts the throng 
As float these blessed words along ! 
Prophet nor priest nor angels seven 
Had opened thus the gate of heaven, 
And he who treads, like them, the sod. 
Must be Messiah, Son of God ! 
Oh, life had been a weary quest. 
But now they shall find rest, find rest ! 
Transporting grace that thus distils 
The dew of peace upon their hills. 
And, far from court or Temple's shrine. 
Takes, for the lowest, thought divine ! — 



140 " COME UNTO me:' 

Whoe'er ye be, alien or neighbor, father, mother, 
maiden, with grief and care opprest, 

Come unto Tne, all ye that labor and are heavy 
laden, and I will give you rest ! 

More dazzling Hermon lifts his snow ; 
Fairer the blue lake gleams below ; 

The wind sings, down Esdraelon ; 
Glad are the oaks in Tabor's glade ; 
And, hoar with thousand years of shade. 

The cedars thrill on Lebanon ; 
While Jordan's oleander bowers 
In rosier bloom unfold their flowers, 
And listening waves make low replies 
As breathes that strain of Paradise : 
Whoe'er ye be, alien or neighbor, father, mother, 

maiden, with grief and care opprest. 
Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy 
laden, and I will give you rest ! 

And still that sweet, celestial call 

Wafts down from wave and mountain wall ; — 

O rest of God ! O perfect Peace ! 

Bring to our burdened souls release ! 

For faint and worn and grieved are we 

As those who walked by Galilee ! 

And clouds in sunshine will depart, 

And wildest tumult sink to calm, 
If deep we hear within the heart 

The Master's words that drop as balm : 



''COME UNTO me:' 141 

Whoe'er ye be, alien or neighbor, father, mother, 
maiden, with grief and care opprest, 

Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy 
laden, and I will give you rest ! 



PRAYERS FOR THE DEAD. 

Nay ! I will pray for them until I go 

To their far realm beyond the strait of death ! 
For, past the deeps and all the winds that blow, 
Somewhere within God's silences I know 

My yearning heart, my prayers with sobbing 
breath. 
Will find and bring them gladness ! Drear and 

slow 
Would dawn my days, were they not followed so 

With perfect love that never varyeth ! 
Does the fond wife, when mists hide wave and 
lea, 
Forget her fisher's safety to implore, 
Till the lost bark that holds her joy in fee, 

Blithe, through the billows, comes again to 
shore ? — 
Our vanished ones but sail a vaster sea. 
And there, as here, God listens evermore. 



THE PERFECT DAY. 

The blast has swept the clouds away, 

The gloom, the mist, the rain ; 
Serene and blue is all the sky 
Save for a white cloud floating high, 
A lone, celestial argosy 

That dares the azure main ; 
And, light as wafts of Eden blow, 
The zephyrs wander to and fro. 

What do I care that yester-night 
The wind was loud and chill ? 

Now earth is lapt in sunny calm ; 

The woods, the fields, exhale their balm ; 

And breeze and brook and bird a psalm 
Sing sweet, by vale and hill ; — 

What do I care that skies were cold ? 

To-day all heaven is flushed with gold. 

O when the blast of death has blown 

The clouds of time away, 
So may the shadows of our years — 
The gloom of doubts and griefs and fears 
And dark regrets and bitter tears — 

Fade in God's perfect day ! 
And seem as slight and brief and vain 
As yester-evening's mist and rain. 



IN MEMORY OF A. E. C. 

A murmuring music filled the room ; 

The air grew sweet with spring-time flowers ; 
The clock ticked softer on the wall, 

As loth to coimt immortal hours. 

My world is peopled not alone 
By those its daily life who share ; 

The loved whom other years have known 
Descend from their diviner air, 

As one might come from over sea, 

Or down the street to sit with me 

And make the fairest morn more fair ; 

And mine are earth and sun and star, 

With friends who were and friends who are. 

They are the same as when they went — 
Tender and true and still my own ; 

But rarer beauty Heaven has lent, 
As if some wind of God had blown 

All trace of doubt and care and dole 

From each serene, enfranchised soul, 

And they could never more make moan ! - 

Yet my unlikeness cannot bar 

From friends who were and friends who are. 

O pure and blessed presences 

That enter, noiseless as the light, 



IN MEMORY OF A. E. C. 145 

From your celestial pleasances, 

What welcome waits you, dawn or night ! 
And in the sweetness, the repose, 
My common room a temple grows, 

All rosy bloom and stainless white. 
Where I commune, no fear to mar, 
With friends who were and friends who are. 

Yet not to outward sight they come ; 

A finer sense their presence tells ; 
As when, from winter cold and dumb. 

Unseen the south wind wakes the dells — 
The south wind and the silent sun — 
While robins sing and brooklets run 

And every bud with rapture swells ! 
Such soul of spring, such Avatar, 
Come friends who were and friends who are. 



WHEN I AIM DEAD. 

When I am dead, let it be, 
Dear Lord ! for blessed rest in Thee ! 
Then, though my ear had never known 
The rapture of a loving tone, 
Nor tender kisses prest my brow 
When heart to heart gave holiest vow, 
Nor fame's bewildering music stole 
Like a sweet fever through my soul, — 
I shall lie down as kings do lie, 
In royal state and majesty ; 
Nor cedar need, nor purple fold, 
Nor sculj^tured stone, nor fretted gold, 
But find my silent chamber there 
Than fairest couch of earth more fair. 
For Thou, the King of kings, wilt spread 
The pillow for my weary head. 

And whether, where I rest alone, 
Come foes to scorn or friends to moan, 
I shall not heed them, — hid in joy, 
Nor friend can give nor foe alloy ; 
But peaceful sleep, as children slumber 
Whose mother's thoughts the minutes number, 
For Thou, the Lord, with love divine 
Wilt watch beside that grave of mine. 



TAKE HEART! 

All day the stormy wind has blown 
From off the dark and rainy sea ; 

No bird has past the window flown, 

The only song has been the moan 
The wind made in the willow-tree. 

This is the summer's burial time ; 

She died when dropped the earliest leaves, 
And, cold upon her rosy prime, 
Fell direful autumn's frosty rime, — 

Yet I am not as one that grieves ; 

For well I know o'er sunny seas 

The bluebird waits for April skies ; 
And at the roots of forest trees 
The May-flowers sleep in fragrant ease, 
And violets hide their azure eyes. 

O thou, by winds of grief o'erblown 

Beside some golden summer's bier, — 
Take heart ! Thy birds are only flown. 
Thy blossoms sleeping, tearful sown. 
To greet thee in the immortal year I 



FORWARD. 

Dreamer, waiting for dai'kness with sorrowful, 
drooping eyes. 
Linger not in the valley, bemoaning the day 
that is done ! 
Climb the eastern mountains and welcome the 
rosy skies — 
Never yet was the setting so fair as the rising 
sun! 

Dear is the past ; its treasures we hold in our 
hearts for aye ; 
Woe to the hand that would scatter one wreath 
of its garnered flowers ; 
But larger blessing and honor will come with the 
waking day — 
Hail, then, To-morrow, nor tarry with Yester- 
day's ghostly hours ! 

Mark how the summers hasten, through blossom- 
ing fields of June, 
To the purple lanes of the vintage and levels 
of golden corn ; 
" Splendors of life I lavish," runs nature's exul- 
tant rune, 
" For myriads press to follow, and the rarest 
are yet unborn." 



FORWABD. 149 

Think how eager the earth is, and every star that 
shines, 
To circle the gTander spaces about God's 
throne that be ; 
Never the least moon loiters nor the largest sun 
declines — 
Forward they roll forever those glorious depths 
to see. 

Dreamer, waiting for darkness with sorrowful, 
drooping eyes, 
Summers and suns go gladly, and wherefore 
dost thou repine ? 
Climb the hills of morning and welcome the rosy 
skies — 
The joy of the boundless future — nay, God 
himself — is thine I 



THROUGH STORM AND SUN. 

Through storm and sun the age draws on 

When heaven and earth shall meet ; 
For the Lord has said that glorious 

He will make the place of his feet. 
And the grass may die on the summer hills, 

And the flower fade by the river, 
But our God is the same through endless years, 

And his word shall stand forever. 



THE HOMELESS. 

Sad hearts ! the wayside and the wilderness 

Are near to Heaven as any fire-lit room ; 
Despairing Hagar angels stoop to bless ; 

God talks with Moses in the desert gloom ; 
And life is but a path to his repose 

Whether we walk through meads of joy and 
love 
Or in lone wastes where every tempest blows ; — 
Some peerless morn we reach our journey's close, 

And lo ! the rapture of the home above ! 



HOPE AND DESPAIR. 

Clouds, dark and lowering, hid the sky ; 
Despair with cup of rue stood by 

And sighed, " Drink, and be mine ! " 
But with such tears and moans she prayed, 
To Hope I turned — the radiant maid — 

And quaffed her rosy wine. 
That instant heaven was sunny blue ! — 
And in my secret soul I knew 
Despair, the coward, brought the shade, 

Brave-hearted Hope the shine. 



"THIS, TOO, WILL PASS." 

" This, too, will pass ! " the Arab king 
Engraved upon his signet ring ; 
And thus, through grief and joy, his heart 
Dwelt, in eternal peace, apart. 



Fair scenes and songs in dreams are nigh, 
Their old enchantment bringing ; — 

Snow-fed Barada lapses by ; 

The muezzin calls from his turret high 
As the rosy dawn is springing ; 

The lark is lost in the English sky, 
And the Kremlin bells are ringing ! 



ENGLAND. 

O Mother-Country ! Of a continent 

The fairest lands and climes we proudly hold ; 

And flocks, and herds, and corn, and wine, and 
gold, 
And stately cities, of earth's rarest blent, 
Are richly ours ; and we are well content 

With our bright world, our banner's starry 
fold, 

And would not be by other name enrolled, — 
Yet how we love thee through our one descent. 
Our common tongue, our old, immortal story 1 
Imperial England, throned amid the seas. 

Under all suns thy daring bugles blow ; 
The east winds and the west waft thy de- 
crees ; — 

Forever light, law, liberty, bestow. 
And farthest ages celebrate thy glory ! 



THE SONG BY THE BARADA. 

Over the brow of Lebanon, 

In a blaze of splendor sank the sun, 

Its gold on the valley glowing ; 
After a day now dark, now fair. 
With a wild sirocco sweeping bare 
The mountain paths, as we journeyed there, 

To stately Baalbec going. 

All in the dusk our tents gleamed white 
Where lone Barada lulled the night, 

Cool from the snows of Hermon ; 
Around us, rose and hawthorn blooms 
Hung, sad, above Abila's tombs ; 
And her ruined temples, through the glooms, 

Looked with a voiceless sermon. 

The wild wind fell ; and, past compare, 
Up in the wonderful depths of air 

Floated the starry islands ; — 
Floated so calm, so bright, so near. 
From the curtained door I leaned to hear, 
Perchance, some song of the blessed, clear. 

In the great o'erarching silence. 



THE SONG BY THE BARABA. 157 

By the tethered horses, from man to man 
Speech and laughter alternate ran, 

Where the muleteers were lying ; 
But story and merriment fainter grew, 
Till the only sound the tent-court knew 
Was the dragoman's footfall echoing through, 

Or the wind in the walnut sighing. 

Listen ! what steals on the air ? Has the breeze 
Wafted down from the shining seas 

A song of the seraphs seven ? — 
Soft and low as the soothing fall 
Of the fountains of Eden ; sweet as the call 
Of angels over the jasper wall 

That welcomes a soul to heaven. 

It swells ! it mounts ! it fills the vale ! 
The hawthorns tremble ; the roses pale 

At its passionate, glorious mazes ! — 
'T is a Peri hymning of Paradise ! 
'T is the plaint of a spirit that yearns and sighs, 
Though lapped in the nameless bliss of the skies, 

For a lost love's embraces ! 

A moment's hush with the falling strain ; — 
And the wild wind, rising, roared amain 

O'er the stream and the covert shady ! 
Breathless I stood in the curtained door, 
But the ravishing melody came no more ; 
And the dragoman, crossing the tent before, 

Cried, " The Nightingale, my lady." 



168 THE SONG BY THE BAR AD A. 

Yet still, when April suns are low, 
I hear the wild sirocco blow. 

And see, in memory's vision, 
Abila's niins strew the hill ; 
The stars the Syrian azure fill ; 
While, listening, all my pulses thrill 

As soars that song Elysian. 



THE SOUTH WIND. 

(Job xxxvii. IT.) 

THE kiss of love and the soul of song 

Is the south wmd after frosts and snows I 
Swallow and violet wait not long 

When warm from the vales of heaven it blows ; 
And meadow and wood and ocean's breast 
In a trance of blissful languor rest, 
And the stars beam soft on the brooding year, 
And God himself comes near, comes near, 
When He quiets the earth by the south wind ! 



THE ORIOLE. 

The sun on the oriole's flashing breast 

As he flits through the rosy apple-flowers, 
A waning moon in the tender west, 
And, high in the boughs, an empty nest 

Beaten by winter's blasts and showers ; — 
Hush ! his ravishing carol rings 

From the topmost twig he makes his throne ! 
Rich as the hue of his glancing wings — 

Mellow as flute-notes zephyr-blown 
Down Phrygian dells when day is done ! — 
Oriole, singing aloft in the sun. 
The waning moon and the empty nest, 
Shadow and silence, at God's behest. 

Follow shine and the brood in the bowers ; 
Follow, and who knows which is best ? — 

Sing on, by the rosy apple-flowers. 



THE SONG OF SONGS. 

O THE lark by Avon's side 

"When the leas were wet with dew, 
Soaring heavenward, fain to hide 

In the far celestial blue ! 
Light the wind of June went by ; 

Rose the mist in sunny mazes ; 
High o'er cloud and zephyr winging 
To the angels soared he, singing 
Golden-sweet, — then silently 

Dropped to rest amid the daisies. 

How the building thrushes sung 

In gardens where the Limmat flows, 
Just as morning's gate outswung 

Flushing all the Alps with rose ! 
How the chorus jubilant 

Floated over lake and river ! 
Life was joy and earth was young 
While those building thrushes sung ; — 
Ah ! their melody will haunt 

Zurich in my thought forever. 

Lark and thrush, I love you well ; 
But I heard a rarer song 



162 THE SONG OF SONGS. 

As a wild March evening fell 

Bleak New Hampshire's heights along. 
Trees were bare and brooks were still ; 

On Kearsarge the snow was lying ; 
One red cloud athwart the gray 
Faded, faded slow away, 
And the north wind down the hill 

Like the dirge of hope was sighing. 

Hark ! a robin in the elm 

Warbling notes so glad and free, 
Straight he brought a summer realm . 

Over thousand leagues of sea ! 
High he sang : "A truce to fear ! 

Frost and storm are but the portal 
We must pass ere June befall, 
And the Lord is love through all ! " 
Lark and thrush, your lays are dear, 

But the robin's is immortal ! 



GOLDENROD AND ASTERS. 

The goldenrod, the goldenrod 

That glows in sun or rain, 
Waving its plumes on every bank 

From the mountain slope to the main, — 
Not dandelions, nor cowslips fine. 

Nor buttercups, gems of summer. 
Nor leagues of daisies yellow and white, 

Can rival this latest comer ! 

On the plains and the upland pastures 

Such regal splendor falls 
When forth, from myriad branches green, 

Its gold the south wind calls, — 
That the tale seems true the Red man's god 

Lavished its bloom to say, 
" Though days grow brief and suns grow cold, 

My love is the same for aye." 

And, darker than April violets 

Or pallid as wind-flowers grow. 
Under its shadow from hill to meadow 

Great beds of asters blow ; — 
O plots of purple o'erhung with gold 

That need nor walls nor wardens. 
Not fairer shone, to the Median Queen, 

Her Babylonian gardens ! 



164 GOLDENROD AND ASTERS. 

On Scotia's moors the gorse is gay, 

And England's lanes and fallows 
Are decked with broom whose winsome grace 

The hovering linnet hallows ; 
But the robin sings from his maple bough, 

" Ah, linnet, lightly won, 
Your bloom to my blaze of wayside gold 

Is the wan moon to the sun ! " 

And were I to be a bride at morn, 

Ere the chimes rang out I 'd say, 
" Not roses red, but goldenrod 

Strew in my path to-day ! 
And let it brighten the dusky aisle. 

And flame on the altar-stair, 
Till the glory and light of the fields shall flood 

The solemn dimness there ; " 

And should I sleep in my shroud at eve, 

Not lilies pale and cold, 
But the purple asters of the wood 

Within my hand I 'd hold ; — 
For goldenrod is the flower of love 

That time and change defies ; 
And asters gleam through the autumn air 

With the hues of Paradise ! 



A CRIMSON CLOVER. 

The maples dropped their withered leaves ; 

Wan, through the mist, the sunset shone ; 
And from the upland, bare of sheaves, 

The jay's call floated, weird and lone. 
No robin's song the orchard stirred ; 

No oriole flashed from elm to elm ; 
Nor even the cricket's chirp was heard, 

Through all that gray November realm. 

The dreary sky, the drifting leaves, 

The jay's far-off, funereal strain, 
Thrilled me, till, sad as one who grieves 

Above his dead, I walked the lane. 
When lo ! 'mid ferns that, fresh and fair, 

Still drooped beneath a sheltering wall 
And gave their fragrance to the air, 

A crimson clover, sweet and tall ! 

O heart of joy ! O breath of June ! 

O grace I thought forever fled ! 
The rose's scent, the robin's tune, 

Were wafted from that clover red ! 
The lane grew pink with apple-blooms, 

A paradise of murmuring bees. 



166 A CRIMSON CLOVER. 

And softly, through the maple-glooms, 
From sumiy meadows stole the breeze ! 

So night fell, but it seemed not dark ; 

The wind blew, but it was not chill ; 
Up rolled the mist till I could mark 

The Pleiades gleam above the hill. 
"Ah, storm and loss, regret and pain, 

Ye are but shades that pass ! " I said ; 
And, turning homeward through the lane, 

I plucked and wore the clover red. 



THE ROSE-BUSH IN AUTUMN. 

I KNOW, and the sunset-angel knows, 
Painter nor palette could paint the rose, 
The bush that tall by the border grows 

And waves in the wind to-day ! — 
Ruby and brown where the green has fled, 
Bronzed, and brightened with gold and red. 
Purple and amber, so lit and wed 
By the sun in the soft blue overhead 

And the light wind's careless sway, 
That the perfect bloom of its summer flowers 
Is poor to the wealth of these autumn hours. 
And the richest jewels of Asia's mines 
Are pale to the hues of its pendent vines 

And the tints of its topmost spray ! 



GOOD-NIGHT. 
(For Music.) 

Now shadows fold the sunset gold, 

The vesper stars gleam fair, 
No robin sings, no swallow wings 

Its eager flight in air. 
But dews the drooping roses fill 

With silent, balmy rain. 
And murmuring rill and zephyr thrill 

The hush of grove and plain, — 
Good-night ! 

Good-night ! good-night ! the moon will light 

The east before the dawn. 
And stars arise to gem the skies 

When these have westward gone. 
Good-night ! and sweet be thy repose 

Through all their shining way. 
Till darkness goes, and bird and rose 

With rapture greet the day, — 
Good-night ! 



WHEN THE ROSE HAS OPENED. 

Out of dreams, in the midnight gloom, 

I wake and the wind blows over the sea ; 
It has heard the storm and the thunder boom. 

And the petrel cry, on its way to me. 
Through the lattice it sighs and swells. 

But my heart is so light and glad and gay, 
That it comes like the music of fairy bells, 

Rung in the green-wood, far away ; 
Sweet as the carol the children sing 

When lover and bride from the altar go, 
And, under the shadow the lindens fling. 

Enter their door in the sunset glow. 

Still, to-night, from the starless sky 

Will fall the white frost's glittering sheen, 
And faint in its chill embrace will lie 

Bud and blossom and mossy green ; 
Dead they will droop in the pallid noon. 

But I shall not weep for their sweetness fled, 
For hid in my heart's immortal June 

Is a flower unfolding, glorious red. 
Moan, O wind of the stormy deep ! 

'Tis the breeze from the Isles of the Blest I 
hear; 
Sink, fair blooms, to your wintry sleep ! 

There 's a fairer waiting to crown the year. 



170 WHEN THE ROSE HAS OPENED. 

When the rose has opened, the nightingale cares 

No more for the paler buds that blow ; 
When the pearl is the prize which the diver 
bears, 

The sea may sleep in its depths below. 
Love is the rose earth's bowers enshrine, 

And the gleaming pearl of the caverned sea ; 
Now the rose and the pearl are mine, are mine. 

And what is the land or the wave to me ? 
Death may come in the morning glow, 

Or under the sunset's amber sliine, — 
I shall say, " Welcome ! I wait to go ; 

For the rose and the pearl are mine, are 
mine ! '* 



THY PSYCHE. 

Like a strain of wondrous music rising up in 

cloister dim, 
Through my life's unwritten measures thou dost 

steal, a glorious hymn ! 
All the joys of earth and heaven in the singing 

meet and flow, 
Richer, sweeter, for the wailing of an undertone 

of woe ; 
How I linger, how I listen for each mellow note 

that falls. 
Clear as chime of angels floating downward o'er 

the jasper walls. 

Every night when winds are moaning round my 
chamber by the sea. 

Thine 's the face that, through the darkness, 
latest looks with love at me ; 

And I dream, ere thou departest thou dost press 
thy lips to mine, — 

Then I sleep as slept the immortals after draughts 
of Hebe's wine ! 

As the young Endymion slumbered in a moon- 
light trance of bliss, 

When, on lonely Latmos lying, Diau stooped his 
lips to kiss ! 



172 THY PSYCHE. 

'T was thy soul-wife, 't was thy Psyche, one up- 
lifted, heavenly day 
Thou did'st call me, — how divinely on thy brow 

love's glory lay ! 
Thou, my Cupid, — not the boy-god whom the 

Thespians did adore, 
But the man so large, so noble, truer god than 

Venus bore. 
I, thy Psyche, — yet what blackness in this 

thread of gold is wove ; 
Thou canst never, never lead me proud before 

the throne of Jove ! 
All the gods might strive to help thee through 

the longest summer day ; 
Still would watch the fatal Sisters spinning in 

the twilight gray, 
And their calm and silent faces, changeless, 

looking through the gloom, 
From eternity would answer, " Thou canst ne'er 

escape thy doom." 
Couldst thou claim me, couldst thou clasp me, 

'neath the blue Elysian skies, 
Then what music and what fragrance through 

their azure depths would rise ! 
Roses all the Hours would scatter; every god 

would bring us joy ; 
So, in perfect loving blended, bliss would never 

know alloy. 



THY PSYCHE. 173 

O my heart ! the vision changes ; fades the soft, 
celestial blue ; 

Dies away the rapturous music, thrilling all my 
pulses through ; 

Lone I sit within my chamber, storms are beat- 
ing 'gainst the pane, 

And my tears are falling faster than the chill 
December rain, — 

Yet, though I am doomed to linger, joyless, on 
this earthly shore, 

Thou art Cupid, I am Psyche, we are wedded 
evermore. 



LOVE SONG OF THE OMAHAS.^^ 

Fades the star of morning, 

West winds gently blow, 
Soft the pine-trees murmur, 

Soft the waters flow. 
Lift thine eyes, my maiden, 

To the hill-top nigh, — 
Gloom and fear will vanish 

When the pale stars die ; — 
Lift thine eyes, my maiden. 

Hear thy lover's cry ! 

From my tent I wander 

Longing but for thee. 
As the day from darkness 

Comes the earth to see. 
Lift thine eyes, my maiden, 

To the hill-top nigh, — 
Lo, the dawn is breaking ; 

Rosy beams the sky ; — 
Lift thine eyes, my maiden. 

Hear thy lover's cry ! 

Lonely is our valley 

Though the month is May ; 



LOVE SONG OF THE OMAHAS. 175 

Come and be my moonlight, 

I will be thy day ! — 
Lift thine eyes, my maiden, 

O behold me nigh ! 
Now the sun is rising ; 

Now the shadows fly ; 
Lift thine eyes, my maiden. 

Hear thy lover's cry ! 



TERESA. 

Am I too happy ? Have I lost 
The hymns of heaven, the shining host, 
For the low song my Bertrand sings 
Beneath the shade the myrtle flings 
Across the door in sunset glow ? 
And for my cherub Angelo ? — 
My glorious boy with sweeter smile 
Than wears, within St. Francis' aisle. 
That infant John the friars say 
Will yet take wing and soar away ! 
Nay, — Mary, grace ! with hair of gold 
And brow like the young Christ's you hold, 
O'er the high altar, hovering fair, 
Upborne by some celestial air ! 

How calm he sleeps upon my breast ! 
Would the great Father send such guest 
Into my bosom, if to win 
And welcome were a deadly sin ? 
Or give the boy my Bertrand's eyes 
If evil lurked in Bertrand's guise ? 
Hark ! 't is his step across the sward ; 
Forgive me if I wander. Lord ! 
But oh, I surely love Thee more 
For the dear face beside the door, 



TERESA. 177 

And for the fond arms' tender fold, 
Than if I knelt, a maiden cold. 
And only knew of love and Thee 
What the lone cloister taught to me. 

And yet the priest says I have sealed 
My own damnation ; madly healed 
My orphan sorrow with a name 
Will send me straight to burning flame ! 
Because I dared to give my vows 
To Bertrand ; would not be the spouse 
Of Holy Church, and wear the veil 
Within the convent's dreary pale, — 
Our Lady's, — hid in dusk of trees 
High up the chilly Pyrenees, 
Where the white, ghostly nuns look out. 
And wild winds toss the boughs about. 
And moan and mutter through the air. 
Of fast and scourge and midnight prayer. 
Oh, what a living death were mine, 
Locked in that gloom of fir and pine ! 

And here, like roses to the sun. 
My bright days open, one by one ; 
And deep within their bloom, my heart 
Sings like some nightingale apart 
In orange grove, while winds of May 
Up the still valley waft his lay ! 
And have I failed of heaven for this ? 
Bartered my soul for Bertrand's kiss ? 



178 TERESA. 

Foregone sweet Mary's kindly care 
Because my boy, like hers, is fair ? 
And does God mock our yearnings so ? 
Nay ! 't is a fiendish lie, I know ! 
God smiles on earth, though throned above ; 
And what is heaven but purer love ? 
We three, together, glad will go,— 
Bertrand and I and Angelo ! 



THE GYPSY. 

Nat ! tell us not of curtained walls ! 

To us they were a prison ; 
Better than all your stately halls, 
Is the heath where the blessed sunlight falls, 
And the free wind blows, and the plover calls 

When the meUow moon has risen. 
And the sod, for us, is a nobler bed, 
Than the couch with richest damask spread, 
For ours are the stars and the mystic ties 
That link the earth to the rolling skies. 

Do you see that girl with the glance of fire ? 
Woe to the man that dares her ire I 
She knows what planet has power to harm ; 
What beam of the moon will fall as balm ; 
And the hour when the stormy Pleiades rise, 
And the star of love gives bliss for sighs ; 
And over your palm, with secret lore, 
She 11 read what the dark years have in store. 
Keep your wealth and your gilded bowers ! 
The glory of field and sky is ours ; 
And all the spirits of earth and air 
Follow our bidding, foul or fair. 



BALTA. 

( Gypsy -Song of Transylvania. ) 

Brave Balta clasped me to his breast 

Beneath the midnight sky ; — 
" Now go I east or go I west, 

I 'U love thee till I die ! " 
" O wander east or wander west, 

My Balta," soft I sighed, 
" By moon and stars I '11 love thee best, 

And wait to be thy bride ! " 

Thrice fell the snows on field and tent, 

And weary was my life, — 
When proud a Prince rode up, and bent. 

And wooed me for his wife. 
*' Nay, sir, I must be Balta's bride ; 

To him my heart I gave ; " — 
He sprang to earth ; his cloak flung wide ; 

And lo ! 't was Balta brave ! 



RUSSIA. 

(1890.) 

Where is the dauntless spirit 

Of the glorious Slavs of old ? — 
The swift resolve, the swifter hand. 

The force no king controlled ? 
O for one peal of the Veche bell ! 
One hour of the potent surge and swell 
When they hailed with scorn a recreant chief : 
" Prince ! we salute thee ! " — and he fell 

From his high estate, at their bidding bold, 
As falls to earth a light-hung leaf 

When the north wind roars adown the wold ! 
O for the Cossacks' burning zeal, 

On the boundless plain, by the flowing river, 
When all for freedom they defied. 

And with their latest heart-beat cried, 

" May the Russian Land rejoice forever ! " 

What ! shall a hundred millions 

Be dumb at the word of one ? 
The light of their day be darkened 

While above them shines the sun ? 
Shall the flower of the Russian people, 

The tender, lofty souls, 



182 RUSSIA, 

Through exile, torture, madness, 

But swell the martyrs' rolls ? — 
Rise in your ancient grandeur, 

O race of love and fire. 
And flame till ice and rock shall melt 

In the blast of your holy ire ! 
Till the very stars shall fight for you, 

And all the winds that blow 
Shall swell your cry for Liberty, 

Shall chant your speechless woe ! 
Let the sword rest in its scabbard ; — 

Your wrongs shall be the blade 
To cleave the bonds that have bound you, 

And win the world to aid. 
Jn the might of Slavic manhood, 

In the power of God on high, 
Claim and defend your birthright ! — 

And the despot's rule shall die. 



ALEXANDER II. OF RUSSIA. 

(1861.) 

Hail to the Czar Alexander ! 

Hail to the Prince of the Free ! 
Not to the proud would he pander ; 
Truer and nobler and grander 

Than Macedon's hero, is he — 
Alexander ! 

Listen ! how melodies rural 

Freight every wind with his praise ! 
Give him the golden crown mural ! — 
First from the seas to the Oural 
Liberty's flag to upraise — 
Alexander ! 

Greatest is not the Czar Peter ; 

( Sound it, Bells, from each steeple ! ) 
No, for his fame wiU be fleeter ; 
No, for the homage is sweeter 

Paid to the Czar of the People — 
Alexander ! 



184 ALEXANDER II. OF RUSSIA. 

Ah ! when the Muscovite story 

Ages to ages shall tell, 
Still will the patriarchs hoary 
Cry, " 'T was the Czar of our glory. 

He who loved Russians so well — 
Alexander ! " 

God be his sliield and defender ! 

Keep him from sorrow afar ! 
Then, when his life he shall render, 
Fold in eternity's splendor 

Russia's redeemer — the Czar 
Alexander ! 



ST. PETERSBURG. 

See ! From the Finland marshes there 
' T is grand St. Isaac's rears in air, 

Column on column, that shining dome ! 
And, just beyond its glorious swell, 
'T is the slender spire of the Citadel 
Where great Czar Peter slumbers well 

All by the Neva's flood and foam, — 
That lifts its cross till the golden bars 
Gleam and burn with the midnight stars ! 

Taller than Luxor's shafts, and grander, 
Looms the Pillar of Alexander 

Over the Palace that fronts the Square ; 
And out where the mist o'er Okhta flies, 
The towers of the Nevski Cloister rise, 
Shrine of the saint who, deathless, lies 

Sealed in silver and jewels rare ; 
And Smolnoi's wealth of spangled blue 
Beams all the dusky distance through. 



MOSCOW. 

Across the steppe we journeyed, 

The brown, fir-darkenecl plain 
That rolls to east and rolls to west. 

Broad as the billowy main ; 
When lo ! a sudden splendor 

Came shimmering through the air. 
As if the clouds should melt and leave 

The heights of heaven bare, — 
A maze of rainbow domes and spires 

Full glorious on the sky, 
With wafted chimes from many a tower 

As the south wind went by. 
And a thousand crosses lightly hung 

That shone like morning stars — 
*T was the Kremlin wall ! 't was Moscow 

The jewel of the Czars ! 



MOSCOW BELLS. 

That distant chime ! As soft it swells, 

What memories o'er me steal ! 
Again I hear the Moscow bells 

Across the moorland peal ! 
The bells that rock the Kremlin tower 

Like a strong wind, to and fro, — 
Silver-sweet in its topmost bower, 

And the thunder's boom below. 

They say that oft at Easter dawn 

When aU the world is fair, 
God's angels out of heaven are drawn 

To list the music there. 
And while the rose-clouds with the breeze 

Drift onward, — like a dream, 
High in the ether's pearly seas 

Their radiant faces gleam. 

O when some Merlin with his spells 

A new delight would bring, 
Say : I will hear the Moscow bells 

Across the moorland ring ! 
The bells that rock the Kremlin tower 

Like a strong wind, to and fro, — 
Silver-sweet in its topmost bower, 

And the thunder's boom below ! 



MOSCOW AT EVENING. 

O THE splendor of the city, 

When the sun is in the west ! 
Ruddy gold on spire and belfry, 

Gold on Moskwa's placid breast ; 
Till the twilight, soft and sombre, 

Falls on wall and street and square. 
And the domes and towers, in shadow. 

Stand like silent monks at prayer. 

'T is the hour for dreams and phantoms ; 

Meet me by the Sacred Gate ! 
Ah, what ghostly forms may enter 

When the night is wearing late ! 
Czars may pass in haughty penance ; 

Khans bewail their Kremlin gone ; 
Boris, Timur, haunt the fortress 

Till the east is pale with dawn. 



THE SHRINES OF MOSCOW. 

Above each gate a blessed Saint 

Asks favor of the skies, 
And the hosts of the foe do fail and faint 

At the gleam of their watchful eyes ; 
And Pole, and Tartar, and haughty Gaul, 
Flee, dismayed, from the Kremlin wall. 

Here lie our ancient Czars, asleep, — 

Ivan and Feodor, — 
While loving angels round them keep 

Sweet peace forevermore ! 
Only, when Easter bells ring loud. 
They sign the cross beneath the shroud. 

O Troitsa's altar is divine, — 

St. Sergius ! hear our prayers ! — 

And Kieff, Olga's lofty shrine, 
The name of " The Holy " bears i 

But Moscow blends all rays in one — 

They are the stars, and she the sun I 



TROITSA MONASTERY. 

O SACRED Troitsa ! when the skies 

Of morn are blue, I lift my eyes 

To see again, in azure air, 

Thy starry domes and turrets fair, 

And to hear from thy gray cathedral walls 

The chanted hymn as it swells and falls. 

Then with the pilgrim train I wait, 

And enter, glad, thy wide-flung gate, 

To drink of St. Sergius' holy well 

That heals the griefs no soul may tell ; 

Or kneel with them at his wondrous shrine, — 

His staff and his simple robe beside, — 
And trace on my breast the mystic sign. 

And pray for the peace of the glorified ! 

Then fade thy towers ; the music dies ; 
Above me are my native skies, 
Blue and clear in the August morn, 
Over the pines and the rustling corn ; 
With a song from brook and breeze and bird 
Sweet as the hymn in thy cloisters heard, — 
And I know the fields are a shrine as fair, 
For the Lord of the saints is here, as there ! 



THE FAIR OF NIJNI NOVGOROD. 

Now, by the Tower of Babel ! 

Was ever such a crowd ? 
Here Turks and Jews and Gypsies, 

There Persians haughty-browed ; 
With silken-robed Celestials, 

And Frenchmen from the Seine, 
And Khivans and Bokhariotes — 

Heirs of the Oxus plain. 

Here stalk Siberian hunters ; 

There tents a Kirghiz clan 
By mournful-eyed Armenians 

From wave-girt Astrakhan ; 
And Russ and Pole and Tartar, 

And mounted Cossack proud — 
Now, by the Tower of Babel! 

Was ever such a crowd ? 



ASIA AT NIJNI. 

Give me that melon of Khiva, 

Luscious and round and fair ! — 
Its mate, for the Lord of China, 

Across the steppes they bear ; 
And place on the tray beside it, 

Worthy of sheikh or khan, 
Peaches that grew in the gardens 

Of the golden Zerefshan. 

And a cup of Flowery Pekoe — 

Tea of the mandarins — 
Gathered in dewy mornings 

Just when the spring begins. 
(Keep for the peasant and Tartar, 

The bowls of the dark Bohea 
Plucked when the heats of summer 

With rank leaves load the tree.) 

Ah, what ravishing flavors ! 

Not the wine of the Rhine, 
Not of Tokay, nor the nectar 

Won from the Cyprian vine. 
Nor Sicily's oranges rarest. 

Nor sweetest figs of Dalmatia, 
Rival the Flowery Pekoe 

And the spicy melons of Asia. 



KAZAN. 

Kazan looks down from the Volga wall, 

Bright in the darkest weather ; 
And the Christian chime and the Moslem call 

Sound from her towers together. 

Shrine of the Golden Horde was she ; 

Boast of the proud Bokhara ; 
And her fame was wafted over the sea, 

And sung in the far Sahara. 

Woe to her Faith and her turbaned Lord ; 

The Cross and the Russ were stronger ; 
Her splendors now are the Czar's reward, 

And her Khans are kings no longer ! 

Yet still she looks from the Volga wall, 

Bright in the darkest weather ; 
And the Christian chime and the Moslem call 

Sound from her towers together. 



THE LOWER VOLGA. 

And still we kept the Volga's tide, 

The Volga rolling gray and wide ; 

While the gulls of the Caspian over it flew, 

A flash of silver and jet in the sun, 
And, chill though the blast from the Oural blew, 

Circled and hovered till day was done. 

Faint, in the lulls of the wind, from shore 

Came the lowing of herds that roved the plain ; 
And the bells rang over the water's roar. 

Calling the hamlet to holy fane. 
And slowly the fishers of Astrakhan 

Stemmed the current with laden keel ; 
While the barges the Kama peasants man, 
And the barks of the Oka, past them ran, 

Heaped with iron and wheat and steel ; 
And as far as the wind could wander free, 

On either side was the grassy sea. 



FAREWELL TO THE VOLGA. 

Farewell, O River of the Plain, 

O River of the Sea ! 
Fain would I follow to the main 

Thy current strong and free ; 
And find, beyond thy reedy islands. 
The sullen Caspian's ocean silence. 

The Kalmuck girls, with braided hair 

And cap of scarlet crown, 
Beside their tents, in evening fair, 

Will watch thy tide go down ; 
And songs of the steppe and its rovers sing, 
Their swarthy lovers listening. 

And Kirghis, dark with desert suns. 

Will halt beside thy brink. 
While the steed, the brackish spring that shuns. 

Stoops low, thy wave to drink ; 
Then, fresh and fleet as at dawn of day, 
Over the plain they 11 haste away. 

Farewell. I feel the west wind blow ; 
The Asian dream is o'er ; 



196 FAREWELL TO THE VOLGA. 

And Europe 's in the sunset glow, 

That gilds thy sandy shore. 
I go where other streams will shine, 
But none so lone, so grand as thine. 



THE EIVER DON. 

O PLACID Don ! I see thee flow 
With shallow, snowy-sanded stream, 

While light the steppe-winds o'er thee blow, 
And cranes and gray-winged herons dream 

Safe as beside some dark lagoon — 

Along thy banks in breezeless noon. 

The Cossack wanders from thy shore, 

But never finds a wave so fair ; 
Thy summer lapse, thy winter roar, 

Still greet him in remotest air ; 
And death is sweet if he may lie, 
With cross above, thy waters by. 



THE COSSACK. 

The Cossack ! the Cossack ! his steed is his 

throne ; 
On the steppe and the desert his glory is known ; 
For he sweeps like the wind from the camp to 

the fray, 
And woe to the foe and the flying that day ! 
" False pagan ! " he cries, " are you slave — are 

you Shah — 
Now die by this lance, or take oath to the 

Czar ! " 

The Cossack ! the Cossack ! a flame of the south 

Is the glance of his eye, is the word of his 
mouth. 

For the steed that he rides, for the saint he 
implores, 

And, fairer and dearer, the girl he adores. 

The maiden's fond lover — the Czar's faithful 
warder — 

Ho ! drink to the Cossack, from border to bor- 
der! 



THE CARPATHIANS. 

(Seen from the Bukovina.) 

O THE glorious purple line 

Of the mountains lifted along the west ! 
Bright, in the sun, their summits shine ; 

Dark, in the shade, their valleys rest. 
Cossack and Tartar may hold the plains, 

And the rivers that creep to a tideless sea ; — 
Mine be the heights where the eagle reigns. 

And cataracts thunder, and winds blow free ! 

Not for the steppe, with its desert sheen. 

From Austria's border to China's wall, 
Would I give the upland pasture's green. 

The beech-tree's shadow, the brooklet's fall. 
Vanish, O weary, mournful Level ! 

Welcome, O Wind my brow that fans ! 
In the splendor of earth again I revel, 

Greeting the purple Carpathians I 



THE PLAINS OF BESSARABIA. 

Here the white cattle graze that feed 

The Austrian Kaiser's towns, 
Close-watched by dogs alert to leap 

If but the herder frowns, — 
Close-watched when, at the sunset hour, 

With bellowings deep and loud, 
To quench their thirst in the cooling stream, 

Wild-eyed and fierce they crowd. 
And here the shepherd tends his flock 

While the long days go by — 
Now couched beside them in the plain, 

Now on the khourgans high ; — 
The plover calls across the steppe ; 

The stork, with snowy breast, 
Flies northward to the kindly roof 

That holds her summer nest ; 
But nothing stirs his drowsy blood 

Unless a lamb should stray, — 
Then woe to wolf or Gypsy thief 

That lurks beside the way. 



BAIDAR GATE." 

Baidar Gate ! lone Baidar Gate ! 
What glories by thy portals wait ! — 
Beyond the pines, wide-boughed and old, 
Cliffs such as climb in Alpine hold ; 
Above, the blue Crimean sky 

Where, in still noons, the eagles fly, 
And poise as if 't were bliss to be 
Becalmed upon that azure sea ! 
Below, the Euxine with its sails 
Fanned by the cool Caucasian gales ; 
And, all between, the glen, the glade. 
Where Tartar girls their tresses braid, 
And slopes where silver streamlets run. 
And grapes hang, purple, in the sun. 

And when, within the wood-fire's glow, 
Fond friends tell tales of long-ago. 
And each recalls some lovely scene 
By mountain pass or meadow green, — 
If they shall turn and ask of me. 
The rarest glimpse of earth and sea, 

1 '11 say, with memory's joy elate, 

" 'T is Baidar Gate ! 't is Baidar Gate ! " 



THE CRBIEAN COAST AND ALUPKA." 

Cross but this rocky height, and lo ! 

A valley rare as Rasselas 

Found in the Abyssinian pass, 
With warmth and beauty all aglow ! 
Where for Tartar mosque and royal villa 
Is many a shining porphyry pillar, 
With marbles for arch and floor and stair 
Veined with vermilion or amber-fair ; 
And fountains fed by the rills that fall 
Cool and clear from the mountain wall. 
Where the olive and orange and nectarine 
Ripen the sea-side gardens in. 
And the winds are sweet as the breeze that sighs 
Over the meadows of Paradise ! — 
Yea, and the Blessed there might crave 
Alupka, pride of the cHff and wave ! 



THE ENGLISH CEMETERY AT 
SEVASTOPOL. 

Over the Dead is a radiant sky, 

And a light wind blows from the Vale of 
Baidar ; 
But what care they as they mutely lie — 

Column and captain, steed and rider ? 

Tulips and poppies can never bloom 

Dear to their slumber as English daisies ; 

Nor the nightingale's warble in bowery gloom 
Atone for the skylark's rapturous mazes. 

Ghostly cities and nameless graves — 
This is the sum of the battle's story ! 

And the wind of Baidar the brown grass waves, 
And sighs above them, " Alas for Glory ! " 



FREDERICK III. OF GERMANY. 

Not the bold Brandenburg, at Prussia's birth ; 
Nor yet Great Frederick when his fields were 

won, 
And her domain stretched wide beneath the 
sun ; 
Nor William whose Sedan aroused the earth, 
Was hero, conqueror, like the king whose worth 
And woe subdued the world beside his bier. 
Serene he walked with death tlirough year and 
year 
Slow-measured ; braving torture's deeps in dearth 

Of hope — the faithful, steadfast, lofty soul ! 
Ah, chant no dirge for him, but joyful paean ! 
Wliile Baltic laves its borders, Rhine doth 

roll. 
No truer life will seek the empyrean 
Than his whose fame nor realm nor age can 

span — 
The manliest Emperor, the unperial man ! 



ROBERT BURNS. 

(Written for the Burns Centennial, Jan. 25, 1859, and re- 
printed at the request of friends in Scotland.) 

When the frost had killed the daisies 

And the hills were white with snow? 
Robert Burns was born in Ayrshire 

Just a hundred years ago. 
Cold about the cottage ingle 

When the cloudy night fell down, 
Blew the wind from off the moorlands 

Where the heath was crisp and brown ; 
But the boy was summer's darling, 

Made of music, love, and fire, 
And the winter could not harm him, 

Let it wreak its utmost ire. 
Now a hundred years are numbered. 

Yet we hail the happy morn 
When, amid the Ayrshire snow-wreaths, 

Robert Burns, the man, was born ! 
And King of Hearts he reigns to-day, 

While the noble throng around him, 
God be praised that a man has sway 

And the wide world's love has crowned him ! 



206 BOBEBT BUBNS. 

With his head upon her bosom 

In the fii'elight's ruddy glow, 
Plaintive songs his mother sang him, — 

Airs of Scotland long ago ; 
And he thrilled at tales of heroes, 

Or of ghosts and warlocks grim, 
Till he felt a chilly horror 

Creeping over every limb, 
And he shuddered as the tempest 

Shook the window with its moan. 
Lest the sobbing and the sighing 

Were a murdered victim's groan ; — 
Now his name is linked with story ; 

Now his life is set to song ; 
All that Scotland has of glory 

Floats with Robert Burns along ! 

So the boy grew older, loving 

Every wild and winsome thing 
From the rush of stormy waters 

To the lark upon the wing ; 
He a lark, too, warbling upward 

From the heather's purple guise. 
Finding sweetest inspiration 

In the light of woman's eyes. 
Dante shrined his Beatrice, 

Laura lives in Petrarch's rhyme, — 
Tenderer praise have Scottish maidens 

Down through all the coming time ! 



EGBERT BUENS, 207 

Every woman loves the singer 
From the peasant to the queen, 

For the sake of " Highland Mary," 
For the sake of " Bonny Jean." 

How he longed for better knowledge, 

How he yearned for noble fame. 
He, the ploughman, the unlettered, 

Born to bear a humble name ; — 
(O my Poet ! thou didst cast it 

In the furrow of the years , 

That " A man 's a man for a' that," 

Thou didst water it with tears ; 
Now the harvest time is coming. 

Now the fields are white with grain, 
Thou, the sower, art the reaper. 

Binding sheaves on every plain !) 
Ah ! the human soul is deeper 

Than the lore he never knew. 
So the lays he sung shall echo 

All the listening ages through. 

Tell us not of mighty princes 

Ruling proud o'er shores and seas ; 
Robert Burns has kingdom grander 

Than the stateliest of these ! 
Theirs by mountain chains is bounded 

Or a river's winding line ; 
His sweeps broad from tropic palm-trees 

To the farthest polar pine ! 



208 ROBERT BURNS. 

Scotland (as a gem she wears it, ) 

Dowered with song his lowly birth, 
And at last his meed, immortal. 

Is the homage of the earth. 
Pardon sins he sorrowed over, 

He who light on daisies trod ; 
Say, " He was of man the lover," — 

Leave him to the love of God ! 

Slow, but surely, comes the morning ; 

Lo ! the east is flushed with rose, 
And the wind so chill at dawning 

With a warmer current blows. 
Truth at last shall be the victor 

Bearing Freedom in its van, 
While the watchword on its banner 

Is " The Brotherhood of Man." 
Thrones and crowns and jeweled sceptres 

Like forgotten toys will be ; 
Only he who loves his fellows 

Shall the heights of honor see. 
Then, recounting lives of heroes, 

As their memory backward turns, 
Truest Prophet, sweetest Singer, 

Men shall reckon Robert Burns! 
And King of Hearts he '11 reign that day 

Wliile the noble throng around him ; — 
God be praised that a man has sway 

And the wide world's love has crowned him! 



Hushed are the bugles that called to the strife ; 
Silent the cannon that roared with the fray ; 
Gloom is forgotten in fulness of life ; 
Freedom and Peace are our treasures to-day. 
Flag of our Fathers ! thy stars shall not wane ! 
Glory attend thee on ocean and shore ! 
Float o'er the Free from the Gulf to the main ; 
God shall defend thee till states are no more ! 



HEROES. 

The winds that once the Argo bore 

Have died by Neptune's ruined shrines, 
And her hull is the drift of the deep sea-floor, 

Though shaped of Pelion's tallest pines. 
You may seek her crew on every isle 

Fair in the foam of ^gean seas, 
But, out of their rest, no charm can wile 

Jason and Orpheus and Hercules. 

And Priam's wail is heard no more 

By windy Bion's sea-built walls ; 
Nor great Achilles, stained with gore, 

Shouts, " O ye Gods ! 't is Hector falls ! " 
On Ida's mount is the shining snow. 

But Jove has gone from its brow away, 
And red on the plain the poppies grow 

Where the Greek and the Trojan fought that 
day. 

Mother Earth ! Are the Heroes dead ? 

Do they thrill the soul of the years no more ? 
Are the gleaming snows and the poppies red 

All that is left of the brave of yore ? 



212 HEROES. 

Are there none to fight as Theseus fought 
Far in the young world's misty dawn ? 

Or to teach as gray-haired Nestor taught ? 
Mother Earth ! Are the Heroes gone ? 

Gone ? In a grander form they rise ; 

Dead ? We may clasp their hands in ours ; 
And catch the light of their clearer eyes, 

And wreathe their brows with immortal flow- 
ers. 
Wherever a noble deed is done 

'T is the pulse of a Hero's heart is stirred ; 
Wherever Right has a triumph won 

There are the Heroes' voices heard. 

Their armor rings on a fairer field 

Than the Greek and the Trojan fiercely trod, 
For Freedom's sword is the blade they wield, 

And the gleam above is the smile of God. 
So, in his isle of calm delight, 

Jason may sleep the years away ; 
For the Heroes live, and the sky is bright. 

And the world is a braver world to-day. 



THE VIRGINIA SCAFFOLD. 

(John Brown, December 2, 1859.) 

Rear on high the scaffold-altar ! all the world 

will turn to see 
How a man has dared to suffer that his brothers 

may be free ! 
Rear it on some hill-side looking North and 

South and East and West, 
Where the wind from every quarter fresh may 

blow upon his breast, 
And the sun look down unshaded from the chill 

December sky, 
Glad to shine upon the hero who for Freedom 

dared to die ! 

All the world will turn to see him ; ■ — from the 

pines of wave-washed Maine 
To the golden rivers rolling over California's 

plain. 
And from clear Superior's waters, where the 

wild swan loves to sail, 
To the Gulf-lands, summer-bosomed, fanned by 

ocean's softest gale, — 
Every heart will beat the faster in its sorrow or 

its scorn, 



214 THE VIRGINIA SCAFFOLD. 

For the man nor courts nor prisons can annoy, 
another morn ! 

And from distant climes and nations men shall 
Westward gaze and say, 

** He who perilled all for Freedom on the scaf- 
fold dies to-day." 

Never offering was richer, nor did temple fairer 
rise 

For the gods serenely smiling from the blue 
Olympian skies ; 

Porphyry or granite column did not statelier 
cleave the air 

Than the posts of yonder gallows with the cross- 
beam waiting there ; 

And the victim, wreathed and crowned, not for 
Dian nor for Jove, 

But for Liberty and Manhood, comes, the sacri- 
fice of Love. 

They may hang him on the gibbet ; they may 

raise the victor's cry 
When they see him darkly swinging like a speck 

against the sky ; — 
Ah ! the dying of a hero that the right may win 

its way, 
Is but sowing seed for harvest in a warm and 

mellow May ! 
Now his story shall be whispered by the fire- 
light's evening glow. 



THE VIRGINIA SCAFFOLD. 215 

And in fields of rice and cotton when the hot 
noon passes slow, 

TiU his name shall be a watchword from Mis- 
souri to the sea, 

And his planting find its reaping in the birthday 
of the Free ! 

Christ, the crucified, attend him ! Weak and 
erring though he be, 

In his measure he has striven, suffering Lord ! to 
love like Thee ! 

Thou the vine, — thy friends the branches, — is 
he not a branch of thine, 

Though some dregs from earthly vintage have 
defiled the heavenly wine ? 

Now his tendrils lie unclasped, bruised, and 
prostrate on the sod, — 

Take him to thine upper garden where the hus- 
bandman is God ! 



THE WHITE SLAVES. 

( 1860. ) 

The household of a Roman, in Rome's luxurious 

time, 
Was filled with slaves in waiting from every 

conquered clime. 
There were dreamy-eyed Egyptians, born where 

the lotus blows. 
And Syrians won from Lebanon, fair as its sun- 
set glows. 
And dancing-girls from Cadiz to while the hours 

with song, 
And dark Nuniidian beauties, the bronzes of the 

throng, 
And light-haired Scythians that pined beneath 

his palace dome. 
And stately Carthaginian maids who would not 

smile in Rome ! 
These were their master's chattels, and humbly 

watched his ways, 
And kept his house, and swelled his train, and 

graced his festal days ; 
But should the princely Roman forget his high 

disdain, 



THE WHITE SLAVES. 217 

And love the maid of Carthage or the singing- 
girl of Spain, 

And did she bear him children, wait till his death 
should be, 

And she and they, by Roman Law, were made 
forever free. 

Alas ! our later lordlings this partial justice scorn ; 
Their hapless children find a night that never 

knows a morn ! 
Slaves while their sire is living, and slaves when 

he is dead ; 
No law denies the market the proud Caucasian 

head ; 
But, hurried to the auction, the youth and maid 

are sold 
To save the lands for legal heirs and fill their 

palms with gold ; 
And the ampler is the forehead and the clearer 

is the skin. 
The sharper grows the contest and the louder 

swells the din. 
In Rome the sire's patrician blood release and 

honor gave, — 
With us it only firmer clasps the fetters of the 

slave. 

And evermore they cry to us in yearning and 

despair. 
To open Freedom's blessed gate and let them 

breathe its air ! 



218 TUE WHITE SLAVES. 

The crescent moon has hardly filled since a fair 

child of nine, 
Her brow just tinted by the land where warmer 

sunbeams shine, 
With her small mouth all tremulous, and eyelids 

wet with tears. 
And cheek now crimson and now pale with 

changing hopes and fears. 
Stood by the church's altar, — 't is there such 

prayers belong, — 
And asked her life and womanhood of the great, 

pitying throng. 
Right largely did they answer, and listening 

angels bore, 
Back to our Lord in heaven one burning story 

more. . . . 

Up the volcano's sloping sides the oak and chest- 
nut climb, 

And vineyards smile and orchards wave as floats 
the vesper chime. 

'T is just before the thunder-burst, but the wide 
heaven is still 

As when an Indian-summer noon lies sleeping on 
the hill ; 

A roar — a crash — a fiery hell shot through the 
quivering sky. 

And oak and vine and orchard bloom in black- 
ened ruin lie ! — 

Beneath us a volcano heaves of more portentous 
name. 



THE WHITE SLAVES. 219 

And millions, waiting wearily, in silence feed its 

flame ; 
No smoke rolls from the crater, nor hot winds 

round it blow, 
But, deep within its throbbing heart, the fires are 

all aglow ; 
Woe to the land that circles it when the wild 

moment falls. 
And the long-smothered fury bursts from out its 

prison walls ! 

Now let us wake from sleep and ease before the 
fatal day. 

Nor dream such grief and wrong can die in 
voiceless calm away ; 

For surely as the mountain stream leaps down 
to find the sea. 

This high-born race, through love or hate, must 
hasten to be free. 

Oh, louder, grander, till the words like trumpet- 
charges call, 

Let every soul cry, " Liberty ! " and *' Liberty for 
all! " 



HARVEST AND LIBERTY. 

Before Election, 1860. 

The harvest moon is waning, 

And under shielding eaves, 
The vrheat lies threshed and garnered, 

Or heaped in heavy sheaves ; 
And on a thousand prairies, 

Like forest seas outroUed, 
Tlie corn stands waiting till the sun 

Shall turn its green to gold. 

Along the fair Ohio 

The grapes are storing wine, — 
Catawba, purple Isabel, 

And fragrant Muscadine ; 
And peach and apple, ripe and red. 

Drop when the light winds blow. 
Ripe and red from the laden boughs. 

Till the grass is heaped below. 

O never 'neath Athenian skies 

To Ceres, garland-crowned. 
When scarlet poppies wreathed with wheat 

Her shining tresses bound. 



HABVEST AND LIBERTY. 221 

Such glad thanksgivings filled the air, 

Such wild and tuneful glee, 
As we could bring with shout and song 

From prairie-land to sea. 

But let us put the sickle by. 

Nor mind the golden sheaves, 
The purpling grapes upon the vine, 

The apples 'mid the leaves ; 
For you and I and all of us 

Have nobler work to-day. 
That will not brook a backward look, 

Nor bear a feast's delay. 

Before the yellow corn is housed, 

Or sealed the amber wine, 
A day will come when every man. 

Upon a holier shrine, 
Such gift may lay as ne'er was borne 

From mine or ocean foam 
For Delphi's god, or greater Jove 

Throned on the hills of Rome. 

Not India's gems, nor Persia's pearls. 

Nor wood of rarest trees, 
Nor spices from the Orient isles 

Slow wafted o'er the seas. 
Our shrine is Liberty's ; how clear 

The wind around it sings ! 
Our gift, the freeman's priceless vote ; 

Our God, the King of kings. 



222 HARVEST AND LIBERTY. 

Now who that loves his wife, or child, 

Or home, or brotlier man, 
But in the bright, heroic ranks. 

That day will swell the van ? 
And strong in love and hope and faith, 

And treading firm the sod, 
Up to the patriot's altar go. 

Beneath the eye of God. 

Young men ! around whose virgin vote 

The proudest thoughts entwine ; 
Fathers ! who ne'er again may see 

The moon of harvest shine ; 
And ye who know the heat of life, 

And bear its toil and fray, 
O bring your gift, with fervent heart 

To Freedom's shrine that day ! 

Let Freedom thrill the poet's song, 

And be the statesman's care. 
And speak from sermon and from hymn. 

And yearn in every prayer. 
Nay, let it wail in ocean winds. 

And flash from out the sun. 
And thunder 'mid the mountain peaks, 

Until the Work be done ! 



THE STRIPES AND THE STARS. 

Apkil, 1861. 

O Star-spangled Banner ! the Flag of our 

pride ! 
Though trampled by traitors and basely defied, 
Fling out to the glad winds your Red, White, and 

Blue, 
For the heart of the North-land is beating for 

you! 
And her strong arm is nerving to strike with a 

will 
Till the foe and his boastings are humbled and 

still ! 
Here 's welcome to wounding and combat and 

scars 
And the glory of death, — for the Stripes and 

the Stars ! 

From prairie, O ploughman, speed boldly away ! 
There 's seed to be sown in God's furrows to-day ; 
Row landward, lone fisher I stout woodman, come 

home ! 
Let smith leave his anvil, and weaver his loom, 
And hamlet and city ring loud with the cry, 



224 THE STRIPES AND THE STARS. 

" For Country, for Freedom, we '11 fight till we 

die! 
Here 's welcome to wounding and combat and 

scars 
And the glory of death, — for the Stripes and 

the Stars ! " 

Invincible Banner ! the Flag of the Free ! 

Now where are the feet that would falter by 

thee? 
Or the hands to be folded till triumph is won, 
And the eagle looks proud, as of old, to the sun ? 
Give tears for the parting, — a murmur of 

prayer, 
Then Forward ! the fame of our standard to 

share ! 
With welcome to wounding and combat and scars 
And the glory of death, — for the Stripes and 

the Stars ! 

O God of our Fathers ! this Banner must shine 
Where battle is hottest, in warfare divine ! 
The cannon has thundered, the bugle has blown. 
We fear not the summons ; we fight not alone ! 
Still lead us, till wide from the Gulf to the Sea 
The land shall be sacred to Freedom and Thee ! 
With love, for ojjpression ; with blessing, for 

scars ; 
One Country — one Banner — the Stripes and 

the Stars ! 



COMPROMISE. 

Inscribed to the Congress of the United States 
assembled in extra session, july 4, 1861. 

Compromise ! Who dares to speak it 

On the nation's hallowed Day, 
When the air with thunder echoes 

And the rocket-lightnings play ? 
Compromise ? while on the dial 

Liberty goes ages back, 
Scourged and bound, for our denial, 

Firmer to the despot's rack ? 

Compromise ? while angels tremble * 

As we falter in the race ; 
Cringe and flatter and dissemble, — 

We ! who hold such royal place ? 
Compromise ? It suits the craven ! 

Has our valor stooped so low ? 
Have we lost our ancient ardor 

Face to face to meet the foe ? 

No ! By all the May-Flower's peril 

On the wild and wintry sea ; 
By the Pilgrim's prayer ascending, 

As he knelt with reverent knee ; 



226 COMPROMISE. 

By that fairest day of summer 

When the true, the tried, the brave, 

Name and life and sacred honor 
To the Roll of Freedom gave ; 

By the tears, the march, the battle. 

Where the noble, fearless died, — 
Round them roar of hostile cannon. 

Waiting angels at their side ; 
By our children's golden future, 

By our fathers' stainless shield. 
That which God and heroes gave us, 

We will never, never yield I 

Hear it, ye who sit in council ! 

We, the People, tell you so ! 
Will you venture " Yes " to whisper 

When the millions thunder " No " ? 
Will you sell the nation's birtliright. 

Heritage of toil and pain, 
While a cry of shame and vengeance 

Rings from Oregon to Maine ? 

Compromise ? We scorn the oif er ! 
Separation we defy ! 
" Firm and free and one forever ! " 

Thus the People make reply. 
" Death to every form of Treason, 
In the Senate, on the field," — 
While the chorus swells triumphant, 
" We will never, never yield ! " 



WHO'S READY? 

July, 1862. 

God help us ! Who 's ready ? There 's danger 

before ! 
Who 's armed and who 's mounted ? The foe 's 

at the door ! 
The smoke of his cannon hangs black o'er the 

plain ; 
His shouts ring exultant while counting our 

slain ; 
And northward and northward he presses his 

line : 
Who 's ready ? Oh, forward ! — for yours and 

for mine ! 

No halting, no discord ; the moments are Fates ; 
To shame or to glory they open the gates ; 
There 's all we hold dearest to lose or to win ; 
The web of the future to-day we must spin ; 
And bid the hours follow, with knell or with 

chime : 
Who 's ready ? Oh, forward ! — while yet there 

is time ! 



228 WHO '5 READY? 

Lead armies or councils — be soldier a-field — 
Alike, so your valor is Liberty's shield ! 
Alike, so you strike when the bugle-notes call, 
For country, for fireside, for Freedom to all ! 
The blows of the boldest will carry the day : 
Who 's ready ? Oh, forward ! — there 's death in 
delay ! 

Earth's noblest are praying, at home and o'er 

sea, 
" God keep the great nation united and free ! " 
Her tyrants watch, eager to leap at our life, 
If once we should falter or faint in the strife ; 
Our trust is unshaken, though legions assail : 
Who 's ready ? Oh, forward ! — and Right shall 

prevail ! 

Who 's ready ? " All ready ! " undaunted we 

cry. 
Our hands on our rifles, our hearts beating high ; 
" No traitor, at midnight, shall pierce us in rest ; 
No alien, at noonday, shall stab us abreast ; 
The God of our Fathers is guiding us still : 
All Forward ! we 're ready, and conquer we 

wiU ! " 



THE MISSISSIPPI. 

Down the silent Mississippi, with his saintly soul 

aflame, 
Twice a hundred years are numbered since Mar- 
quette, rejoicing, came. 
All the winter in his cabin high among the 

Huron snows. 
Gaining lore of forest hunters, tracing maps by 

firelight glows, 
Offering to the Blessed Virgin morn and evening 

vow and prayer 
That his eyes might view the River flowing 

southward broad and fair, — 
Wondrous grace ! upon its bosom, glad beneath 

the summer blue, 
Rapt in visions, lost in praises, lo ! he guides his 

light canoe ! 

Winding 'mid the wooded islands tangled deep 

with musky vines ; 
Flower-enchanted, past the prairies with their 

dim horizon lines ; 
By the fierce Missouri water, dark in gorge and 

cataract wiles. 



230 THE MISSISSIPPI. 

Down from nameless regions rolling, restless, 

thrice a thousand miles ; 
Past Ohio, loveliest river, all its banks aflush 

with rose, 
"Wliile the red-bud tints the woodlands and the 

lavish laurel blows ; 
By the belts of odorous cedar, through the 

cypress-swamps below, 
Till he greets its wider grandeur, knows the 

secret of its flow ; 
Fainting then from summer fervors, homeward 

turns in sacred awe, 
Dying humbly with his Hurons by their -wind- 
swept Mackinaw. 

Then La Salle, impatient, fearless, took the Fa- 
ther's idle oar. 

Longing for the larger splendor, listening for the 
ocean roar ! 

Under Bluffs that seek the beauty of the upper 
shores to win ; 

Past the Ar'kansas, slow-drifting with its moun- 
tain tribute in ; 

By the bend where sad De Soto, with his high 
Castilian pride, 

Lulled forever and lamented, sleeps, a king, 
beneath the tide ; 

Through the forests, perfume - haunted, weird 
moss waving to and fro, — 

There the cottonwood towers stately, and the 
tall magnolias blow, — 



THE MISSISSIPPI. 231 

Past the bayous, still and sombre, where the 

alligator swims, 
And at noonday, on the shore, the paroquet his 

plumage trims ; 
Gliding down by green savannas — ho ! the wind 

blows cool and free ! 
Bright, beyond, the Gulf is gleaming — lo ! the 

River finds the Sea ! 
Out of mystery, out of silence, now the mighty 

stream is one, — 
Rear the cross, O joyful Boatman ! chant sweet 

hymns at set of sun ! 

Ah, La Salle, Marquette, De Soto ! boatmen 

bold in song and story, 
Lighting up the river romance there are later 

deeds of glory. 
Lonely was the stream, the forest, as ye dropped, 

with measured calm, 
Down to golden zones of summer through the 

fresh world's breeze and balm ; — 
But the Indian, silent- gazing, half in welcome, 

half in fear ; 
On the grassy plains the bison, in the dewy 

glades the deer ; 
Not a sound to break the stillness save the song 

of woodland bird. 
Or the panther's cry at evening from the cypress 

thickets heard ; 
Or the eagle's scream, as northward to his cooler 

lakes he flew, 



232 THE MISSISSIPPI. 

Fainter ringing down the valley till he faded in 

the blue. 
Twice a hundi^ed years are numbered, and the 

Red man roams no more 
Through the green aisles of the forest, — by the 

reedy, open shore ; 
"With the startled deer and bison he has fled 

before the bands 
That your fleet canoes have followed from the 

wondering father-lands. 
Now a people build its borders ; now the great 

fleets hasten down 
With the sheaves of many a prairie, witli the 

wealth of many a town ; 
Decks piled high from tropic harvest in the 

warmer realms below, — 
nice and sugar from the cane-fields, and the 

cotton's downy snow ; 
Laden sea-craft inland sailing, rafts that find the 

current's fall. 
Smoke of steamer, call of pUot, from the Gulf to 

high St. Paul ; 
And the thronged, exultant River is a nation's 

heart, whose hands 
Far to eastward, far to westwai'd, touch the 

shining ocean sands. 

Will ye trust the strange recital, — tale that only 

fiend should tell .'* 
When the nation's Tnom was fairesty black t?ie 

night of Treason fell ! 



THE MISSISSIPPI. 233 

Traitors claiming all the South-land, and the 

River once so free, 
Under forts and frowning ridges, rolling, alien, 

to the sea ! 
Freedom's banner madly trampled, and the motto 

flaunted high, 
" On the Slave we found Dominion, — who 

shall dare our right deny ? '* 

God of Justice ! how our rally rung through all 

the startled air ! 
Million-voiced, the North made answer, rising 

calm and strong from prayer ! 
Caught the rifle, clasped the sabre, put the pen, 

the ploughshare by, — 
Fathers, brothers, surging Southward when they 

heard the gathering cry. 
Till, from green Dakota uplands to the rocky 

isles of Maine, 
Every hamlet, every city, lent its bravest to the 

train ; 
Freedom's flag above them waving, freedom's 

songs triumphant sung, 
Ne'er, I ween, to such an army, foe the gage of 

battle flung. 

Then they saw the captive River, and from every 

port and bay 
Summoned straight each armM vessel that at 

anchor watching lay ; — 



234 THE MISSISSIPPI. 

From Pacific ; from the islands where the spice- 
winds softly blow ; 

Off the sultry Afric border ; shores where Eu- 
rope's olives grow. 

All too few ; — in hillside pastures 'neath the axe 
the stout oaks reel, 

Pines of Saginaw and Saco hewn for masts to 
meet the keel. 

Night and day the roaring forges shape the an- 
chor, weld the chain, 

Round the ball, and cast the cannon ; their 
glows shall not be vain ! 

Day and night the engines labor, hammers ring 
and shuttles fly. 

Till the avenging fleet is fashioned, Southward 
set, with colors high. 

Homeward come the eager war-ships, scattered 
wide in foreign seas ; 

Past the Indies, through the Gulf-way, all their 
canvas to the breeze ! 

Right across the sandy shallows, up the channel 
broad and deep, — 

Hark ! their cannon's judgment thunder wakes 
the traitor-city's sleep ! 

Moated Jackson, strong St. Philip ! ye were 
weak and powerless then : 

Low must crumble wall and bastion had ye thrice 
ten thousand men. 

Ye may man your casemates newly, hurl your 
shot like hellish rain, — 



THE MISSISSIPPI. 235 

Sweep their shells in fiery circles, strewing all 

your lines with slain. 
Oh, such ships were never anchored off the Nile or 

Trafalgar, — 
See ! they pass the boom, the fortress, steady, 

stormed from hull to spar ! 
Oh, such men were never marshaled on the deck 

for siege or slaughter, — 
Think how sank the bold Varuna, hero-freighted, 

'neath the water ! 
Forts are silenced, fleets are vanquished, shot nor 

flame can bear them down ; 
Now, to God alone be glory ! safe they come be- 
fore the town ! 
And the foe by tent and fireside learned full well 

what Treason means, 
When the cannon, wrathful, deadly, lined the 

wharves of New Orleans ; 
When they heard the rapturous music, caught 

the crews' victorious cheer, 
As again, on dome and fortress, rose the old flag, 

floating clear ; 
Saw the pale, bewildered army flee in terror and 

dismay : — 
Now, to God alone be glory, 't was a proud and 

joyful day ! 

From St. Louis, down the River, nobly manned, 

the Gun-boats move ; 
Woe to fort and recreant city when they round 

their prows above ! 



236 TEE MISSISSIPPI. 

Ah, what valor seized the islands I boasting 

Memphis gained again ! 
Wrapt the rebel ships in ruin, ^yave and flame 

our allies then ! 
Mile by mile the restless River from its tyrant 

rule they free, 
Till the fleet that left the prairies hails the fleet 

that sailed from sea ! 

" Patience yet, O greeting sailors ! mark ! Port 

Hudson, Vicksburg, wait, 
Grimly couched on savage highlands, sworn to 

guard the River-gate. 
Call the soldiers from their cami>fires ! man the 

guns ! there 's work to do 
Ere this barred and gloomy water you may sail 

unchallenged through." 
Then beneath the bluffs they anchored, while 

their armies in the rear 
Made the prisoned traitors tremble, slowly, surely, 

drawing near. 
How we waited for the tidings ! " Will they 

never yield ? " we cried ; 
" Must we hold them still beleaguered, hopeless, 

starving in their pride ? " 

Spring went fruitless down to summer ; 't was 
the Fourth day of July ; 

When, to swell the roar of cannon and the an- 
thems pealing high, 



THE MISSISSIPPI. 237 

Sudden flashed the words of triumph, lightning- 
borne from town to town, 

" Haughty Vicksburg has surrendered ! we have 
torn their colors down ! " 

And again, in clearest echo, ere the clamorous 
joy was still, 

" We are masters of Port Hudson, and the River 
sail at will ! " 

So from Traitor's grasp forever was the Missis- 
sippi won ; — 

Praise the Lord, O shouting People ! round the 
world the glad news run ! 

By the wave or in the woodland slumber still, O 

Boatmen bold ! 
Seaward down, through loyal levels, rolls the 

River as of old ! 
Rolls the River, swift, resistless, scorning bounds 

and forts and foes. 
Undivided from the Passes to Itasca's lone re- 
pose. 
Hark ! a murmur of thanksgiving ! all its waves 

in music flow, — 
Ransomed banks lean o'er to listen, — joyous 

winds harmonious blow ! 
On its breast in grander plenty through the ages 

yet unborn. 
Still shall float the teeming harvests, — fairest 

cotton, golden corn ; 



238 THE MISSISSIPPI. 

Cities gleam and orchards blossom ; woodmen 
open to the sun 

Leagues of lowUmd, breadths of forest where its 
tribute-rivers run, 

Till a free and happy people fill the valley rich 
and wide, 

From the springs of great Missouri far to Alle- 
ghany's side ; 

While above them, all unclouded, done with war 
and envious jars, 

Brighter through the circling ages shine the 
glorious Stripes and Stars ! 

Then amid the yellow wheat-fields as they reap 

in summer days ; 
Heap, when harvest-moons are shining, rustling 

sheaves of ripened maize ; 
Pluck the grapes from purple hillsides when the 

vintage crowns the year ; 
Grind the cane and house the cotton that has cost 

no bondman dear ; 
Choose untrammeled, righteous rulers, fit the 

country's name to bear ; 
Hear the bells from bluff and prairie through the 

hush of Sabbath air ; 
They shall tell the thrilling story of the twice-won 

River o'er, 
And the Boatman and the Soldier honored be 

forevermore ; 



THE MISSISSIPPI. 239 

In the nation's song and record, freighted prose 

and winged rhyme, 
Light canoe and war-ship gliding, hallowed, down 
the stream of time I 
July, 1863. 



BY THE SHENANDOAH. 

My home is drear and still to-night, 

Where Shenandoah, murmuring, flows ; 
The Bhie Ridge towers in the pale moonlight, 

And balmily the south wind blows ; 
But my fire burns dim, while athwart the wall, 
Black as the pines, the shadows fall ; 
And the only friend within my door 
Is the sleeping hound on the moonlit floor. 

Roll back, O weary years ! and bring 

Again the gay and cloudless morn 
When every bird was on the wing. 

And my blithe, summer boys were born ! 
My Courtney fair, my Philip bold. 
With his laughing eyes and his locks of gold, — 
No nested bird in the valley wide 
Sang as my heart, that eventide. 

Our laurels blush when May-winds call ; 

Our pines shoot high through mellow showers ; 
So rosy-flushed, so slender-tall, 

My boys grew up from childhood's hours. 
Glad in the breeze, the sun, the rain. 
They climbed the heights or they roamed the 
plain ; 



BY THE SHENANDOAH. 241 

And found where the fox lay hid at noon, 
And the shy fawn drank by the rising moon. 

Fleet Storm, look up ! you ne'er may hear, 

When all the dewy glades are still, 
In silver windings, fine and clear, 

Their whistle stealing o'er the hill ! 
Nor fly to the shade where the wild deer rest, 
Ere morn has reddened the mountain's crest ; 
Nor sit at their feet, when the chase is o'er, 
And the antlers hang by the sunset-door. 

What drew our hunters from the hills ? 

They heard the hostile trumpets blow, 
And leapt adown like April rills 

When Shenandoah roars below. 
One, to the field where the old flag shines. 
And one, alas ! to the rebel lines ! 
My tears — their fond arms round me thrown — 
And the house was hushed and the hillside lone. 

But oh ! to feel my boys were foes 

Was sharper than their sabres' steel! 
In every shifting cloud that rose 

I saw their deadly squadrons wheel ; 
And heard in the waves, as they hurried by, 
Their hasty tread when the fight was nigh. 
And, deep in the wail the night-winds bore. 
Their dying moan when the fight was o'er. 



242 BY THE SHENANDOAH. 

So time went on. Tlie skies were blue ; 

Our wheat-fields yellow in the sun ; — 
When down the vale a rider flew : 

" Ho, neighbors ! Gettysburg is won ! 
Horse and foot, at the cannon's mouth 
We hurled them back to the hungry South ; 
The North is safe ; and the vile marauder 
Curses the hour he crossed the border ! " 

My boys were there ! I nearer prest, — 

" And Philip, Courtney, what of them ? " 
His voice dropped low : " O madam ! rest 
Falls sweet when battle's tide we stem. 
Your Philip was first of the brave that day 
With his colors grasped as in death he lay ; 
And Courtney — well, I only knew 
Not a man was left of his rebel crew." 

My home is drear and still to-night 

Where Shenandoah, murmuring, flows 
The Blue Ridge towers in the pale moonlight, 

And balmily the south wind blows ; 
But my fire burns dim, while athwart the wall. 
Black as the pines, the shadows fall ; 
And the only friend within my door 
Is the sleeping hound on the moonlit floor. 

Yet still in dreams my boys I own ; 
They chase the deer o'er dewy hills, 



BY THE SHENANDOAH. 243 

Their hair by mountain winds is blown, 

Their shout the echoing valley fills. 
Wafts from the woodland, spring sunshine, 
Come as they open this door of mine, 
And I hear them sing by the evening blaze 
The songs they sang in the vanished days. 

I cannot part their lives and say, 

" This was the traitor, this the true ; " 
God only knows why one should stray. 

And one go pure death's portals through. 
They have passed from their mother's clasp and 

care ; 
But my heart ascends in the yearning prayer 
That His larger love will the two enfold, — 
My Courtney fair and my Philip bold I 
October, 1863. 



FOR FREEDOM! 

Response of the Colored Soldiers to the Call 
OF the President, January, 1804. 

Thank God ! 'T is the war-cry ! They call us ; 

we come ; 
Clear summons the bugle, bold beckons the drum ; 
Our " Ready ! " rings clearer ; our hearts bolder 

beat 
As under the bright flag rejoicing we meet, 
For still we have trusted through darkest delay. 
That the flash of these guns would be dawn of 

our day. 

'T is dawning ! 't is morning ! the hills are 

aglow ! 
God's angels roll backward the clouds of our 

woe ! 
One grasp of the rifle, one glimpse of the fray, 
And chattel and bondman have vanished for aye ; 
Stern men they will find us who venture to feel 
The shock of our cannon, the thrust of our steel. 

And then, when the fierce day is done, in the 

gleam 
Of tlie camp-fire at midnight, how gayly we '11 

dream ! — 



FOR FREEDOM] 245 

The slave is the citizen, coveted name ! 

That lifts him from loathing, that shields him 

from shame ; 
His cottage unravished, and, gladsome as he, 
His wife by the hearthstone, his babe on her 

knee. 

The cotton grows fair by the sea as of old ; 
The cane yields its sugar, the orange its gold ; 
Light rustle the corn-leaves, the rice-fields are 

green. 
And, free as the white man, he smiles on the 

scene ; — 
The drum beats ; we start from our slumbers 

and pray 
That the dream of the night find an answering 

day. 

To God be the glory ! They call us ; we come ; 
How welcome the watchword, the hurry, the 

hum; 
Our hearts are on fire as our good swords we 

bare, 
" For Freedom ! for Freedom ! " soft echoes the 

air; 
The bugles ring cheerly ; the banners float high ; 
O comrades, strike boldly ! our triumph is nigh ! 



THE HUNDRED DAYS' MEN. 

In the busiest season of the spring of 1864, the States 
of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois pledged to the Government 
of the United States one hundred thousand men for a 
hundred days. 

'T IS time the corn was planted, the latest wheat 

was sown, — 
The oriole is in the elm, the last swan northward 

flown ; 
By streams the cottonwood is green, the plum 

waves white as snow, 
The wild-crab blushes in the woods, the red-bud 

soon will blow ; 
And to the fenceless pastures, whose grass grows 

sweet and tall. 
Slow move the herds, to feed at will till autumn 

frosts shall fall. 
O for the arms so sturdy, O for the tireless feet, 
That shared our toil when other Mays brought 

summer bloom and heat ! 
But proud we spared our manliest to face the 

country's foe ; 
To march when word comes, " Forward ! " to 

ride when bugles blow : 



THE HUNDRED DAYS' MEN. 247 

Now calm they sleep, by plain and hill, wrapped 

in their army-blue, 
Or bear our banners bravely on, — and will, till 

wars are through ! 

And still there 's peril. Fife and drum thrill 

every village now, 
And quickly down the grain is flung and idle 

stands the plough. 
O eager youth ! O earnest men ! your steps we 

will not stay ; 
There 's nobler need, there 's weightier work ; 

haste to the camp away ! 
We 11 bear the double burden, and blithely plant 

and sow, 
That tent and town and lonely roof no fear of 

want may know. 
And when come round the reaping-days and 

lingering moonlight-eves, 
In cheerful households, young and old, we '11 bind 

the ripened sheaves ; 
The girls shall pluck the golden ears, the happy 

children glean. 
And thus we '11 bring the harvest home, with 

many a song between. 
And praise to God that sheaves nor sons we 

prized, the Land before. 
But joyfully, in busy May, gave up our thou- 
sands more ! 
Illinois, May, 1864. 



THE GRAVE OF LINCOLN. 

Now must the storied Potomac 

Laurels forever divide ; 
Now to the Sangamon f ameless 

Give of its century's pride ; 
Sangamon, stream of the prairies, 

Placidly westward that flows, 
Far in whose city of silence 

Calm he has sought his repose. 
Over our Washington's river 

Sunrise beams rosy and fair ; 
Sunset on Sangamon fairer, — 

Father and martyr lies there. 

Kings under pyramids slumber. 

Sealed in the Libyan sands ; 
Princes in gorgeous cathedrals, 

Decked with the spoil of the lands 
Kinglier, princelier sleeps he, 

Couched 'mid the prairies serene, 
Only the turf and the willow 

Him and God's heaven between ; 
Temple nor column to cumber 

Verdure and bloom of the sod, — 
So in the vale by Beth-peor 

Moses was buried of God. 



THE GRAVE OF LINCOLN. 249 

Break into blossom, O prairies, 

Snowy and golden and red ! 
Peers of the Palestine lilies 

Heap for your Glorious Dead ! 
Roses as fair as of Sharon, 

Branches as stately as palm, 
Odors as rich as the spices — 

Cassia and aloes and balm — 
Mary the loved and Salome, 

All with a gracious accord, 
Ere the first glow of the morning 

Brought to the tomb of the Lord. 

Wind of the west ! breathe round him 

Soft as the saddened air's sigh, 
When to the summit of Pisgah 

Moses had journeyed to die ; 
Clear as its anthem that floated 

Wide o'er the Moabite plain, 
Low with the wail of the people 

Blending its burdened refrain. 
Rarer, O wind ! and diviner, — 

Sweet as the breeze that went by, 
When, over Olivet's mountain, 

Jesus was lost in the sky. 

Not for thy sheaves nor savannas 
Crown we thee, proud Illinois ! 

Here in his grave is thy grandeur ; 
Born of his sorrow thy joy. 



250 THE GRAVE OF LINCOLN. 

Only the tomb by Mount Zion, 

Hewn for the Lord, do we hold 
Dearer than his in thy prah'ies, 

Girdled with harvests of gold ! 
Still for the world through the ages 

Wreathing with glory his brow, 
He shall be liberty's Saviour ; 

Freedom's Jerusalem thou I 
May, 1865. 



NOTES. 



Note l,page 3. 

" Cleobis and Biton, natives of Argos, possessed a suf- 
ficient fortune, and had withal such strength of body 
that they were both alike victorious in the public games. 
When the Argives were celebrating a festival of Hera, it 
was necessary that their mother should be drawn to the 
temple in a chariot ; but the oxen did not come from the 
field in time ; the young men, therefore, being pressed for 
time, put themselves beneath the yoke, and drew the car 
in which their mother sat ; and having conveyed it forty- 
five stades, they reached the temple. . . . The men of 
Argos who stood round commended the strength of the 
youths, and the women blessed her as the mother of such 
sons ; but the mother herself, transported with joy both 
on account of the action and its renown, stood before the 
image, and prayed that the goddess would grant to Cleo- 
bis and Biton, her own sons, who had so highly honored 
her, the greatest blessing man could receive. 

" After this prayer, when they had sacrificed and par- 
taken of the feast, the youths fell asleep in the temple it- 
self, and never awoke more, but met with such a ter- 
mination of life. Upon this the Argives, in commemora- 
tion of their piety, caused their statues to be made and 
dedicated at Delphi." — Herodotus, i. 31. 

Cicero (Tusc. Disp. I. 47) and others, as Servius (ad 
Virg. Geog. iii. 532) and the author of the Platonic dia- 
logue entitled " Ariochus" (367 C), relate that the ground 



252 NOTES. 

of the necessity was the circumstance that the youths' 
mother was priestess of Juno at the time. Servius says 
a pestilence had destroyed the oxen, which contradicts 
Herodotus. Otherwise the tale is told with fewer varia- 
tions than most ancient stories. The Argives had a 
sculptured representation of the event in their temple of 
Apollo Lycius to the time of Pausanias (Pausan. II. xx. 
§2). 

Note 2, page 9. 

See Prescott's " Conquest of Peru ;" " The Life of Pi- 
zarro, " and "The Spanish Conquest in America," by 
Sir Arthur Helps ; the " Commeutarios Reales " of Gar- 
cilaso de la Vega, etc. 

" Aide ! ' ' the exclamation of the Inca according to Gar- 
cilaso, is rendered "Alas! " by Sir Arthur Helps; but 
Professor John Fiske says concerning it, " There is a good 
deal of latitude in the meaning of interjections ; " and 
probably, here, it expressed indignation. 

The borla was a crimson, tasseled fillet ; emblem of 
sovereignty ; the crown of the lucas. 

Note S,page 17. 

Ancient and widespread tradition ascribes the ruined 
towers on the headlands of the Levant to St. Helena, and 
avers that they were built for the beacon-fires which 
flashed the news of the discovery of the Cross to her royal 
son, the Emperor Constantine, at Constantinople. Maun- 
drell, the English traveler, who visited Palestine in 1697, 
associates them with Helena, but as constructions for the 
defense of the country against pirates. Many other au- 
thors and travelers have referred to them, and to the 
tradition ; notably, in our own day, Dr. W. M. Thomson 
in " The Land and the Book " (pp. 58 and 145), and Mr. 
W. C Prime in his glowing monograph, " Holy Cross." 



NOTES, 253 

Perhaps St. Elmo's or St. Helen's fire (feu (THilene) 
is a nautical memento of Helena's Beacons. 

Note 4, page 23. 

With the Buddhist belief in the transmigration of souls, 
a rare white animal (albino), especially a white elephant, 
is thought to be the incarnation of a distinguished person, 
perhaps of a future Buddha (Enlightened One), — there- 
fore the worship. "Merit," in the Buddhist sense, is the 
accumulation of good deeds to secure reward. 

" Kandy's tooth " is a relic of Buddha, and the palla- 
dium of Ceylon. It is a bit of ivory, in form like a tooth, 
enshrined in six cases of gold and sUver inlaid with pre- 
cious stones, and preserved in a chamber of the temple 
attached to the palace of the kings, at Kandy. The 
"Footprint" is a print in the rock at Probat, Siam, 
resembling a huge human foot, and believed to be an 
imprint of the foot of Buddha. Over it is a beau- 
tiful shrine, and it is a place of yearly pilgrimage for the 
Siamese. The "Bo-tree" (Ficus religiosa) is the tree 
under which GaTitama was sitting when he became a 
Buddha. 

Note 5, page 25. 

Mahdi is an Arabic word, meaning Leader or Guide. 
Moslems generally believe that the expected great Mahdi 
will be a descendant of the Prophet, and wUl appear to- 
wards the end of time to uproot wickedness and establish a 
reign of righteousness on earth. There have been many 
Mahdis in Mohammedan history. 

Mohammed Achmet, "El Mahdi" of 1881 and suc- 
ceeding years, was born about 1848, in Dongola. He 
studied religion in a village near Khartoum, and then 
took up his abode on an island in the White Nile, living 
in a cave or recess in the earth. Here he acquired a rep- 
utation for sanctity, assembling many dervishes (holy 



254 NOTES. 

men) about him, and increasing his influence by marrying 
the daughters of Arab chiefs. In 1881 he proclaimed 
himself Mahdi, preaching universal equality, law, and 
religion, community of goods, and a " Holy War " against 
the Infidels. The oppressed Soudanese flocked to hLs 
standard ; his emissaries were everywhere busy ; his proc- 
lamations thrilled the Moslem world ; his victories in- 
flicted great loss upon Egypt and upon her British allies. 
A naan of genius and of rare force and fervor, his name 
will live in the annals of the nineteeth century. 

Note 6, page 32. 

"In the ecclesiastical history of Nicephorus Callixtus, 
he has inserted a description of the person of Mary which 
he declares to have been given by Epiphanius, who lived 
in the fourth century, and by him derived from a more 
ancient source. ' She was of middle stature ; her face 
oval; her eyes brilliant and of an olive tint; . . . her 
complexion fair as wheat. ' " 

* ' The Empress Eudocia, when traveling in the Holy 
Land, sent home a picture of the Virgin holding the Child 
to her sister-in-law Pulcheria, who placed it in a church 
at Constantinople. It was at that time regarded as of 
very high antiquity, and was afterwards attributed to St. 
Luke. It is certain that a picture, traditionally said to 
be the same, did exist at Constantinople, and was so much 
venerated by the people that it was regarded as a sort of 
palladium, and borne in a superb litter or car in the midst 
of the imperial host when the emperor led the army in 
person. This relic is said to have been taken by the Turks 
in 1453, and dragged through the mire, but others deny 
this. . . . According to the Venetian legend it was taken 
by the blind old Dandolo when he besieged and took 
Constantinople in 1204, and brought in triumph to Venice, 
where it has ever since been preserved, in the Church of 
St. Mark." — Mrs. Jameson's '* Legends of the Madonna." 



NOTES. 255 

Note 7, page 35. 

This Incident of the Crusade of Richard Coeur de 
Liou is given in the " Chronicles of the Cistercians. ' ' 

Note 8, page 56. 

Written for the eommemoration of the Bi-Centennial 
Settlement of the State of New Hampshire by the New 
Hampshire Historical Society, May 22, 1873. " Captain 
Smith " was John Smith of Pocahontas fame, who sailed 
along the New England coast in 1614, and discovered the 
Isles of Shoals. A poor monument to his memory stands 
upon the highest point of Star Island, one of the group. 

Note 9, page 70. 

Kearsarge, the moimtain which gave its name to the 
vessel that sunk the Alabama, off Cherbourg, June 19, 
1864, is a noble granite peak in Merrimack County, New 
Hampshire, the twin of Monadnoc, rising alone, three 
thousand feet above the sea. A lofty mountain in Car- 
roll County, N. H., has also been known as Kearsarge; 
but the name belonged, from the earliest times, to the 
Merrimack County peak, and the other is more properly 
called Pequawket. 

Note 10, page 75. 

" That gem of isles 
Sacred to captives' woes and wiles." 

Duaton's Island, at the mouth of the Contoocook, just 
below the village of Penacook in Concord, New Hamp- 
shire. This island is some two acres in area, and its 
name comes from Hannah Duston, who on March 15, 
1697, was, with her nurse, carried away by the Indians 
from Haverhill, Mass., and brought to this island, which 
was their abode. Here, one midnight, with the help of 



256 NOTES. 

her companion and a captive white boy, all of them hav- 
ing' feig-ned slumber, she dispatched the Indians in their 
sleep, and made her w^ay, in one of their canoes, down the 
Merrimack to Haverhill. To her memory, in June, 1874, 
there was erected on the island an impressive monument 
of Concord granite, representing her as standing with a 
tomahawk in hand. The Northern Railroad crosses the 
island to the west of the statue. 

Note 11, page 78. 
The history of our Southwestern Border is replete with 
stories of capture and escape similar to the one here re- 
lated. The records of that able, humane, and lamented 
officer, the late General Crook, when he commanded the 
Department of Arizona, furnish many such incidents. 
Captain John G. Bourke, U. S. A., has detailed some of 
them in his brilliant narratives, " An Apache Cam- 
paign" (Scribners, New York, 1886) — that memorable 
campaign when General Crook and his command pene- 
trated to the fastnesses of the Sierra Madre, and sui-pris- 
ing the savage Chiricahua Apaches, brought them, hum- 
bled, to the San Carlos Agency. Five Mexican women 
who had been their captives came into the camp, ex- 
hausted, ragged, and almost famished — one with a 
baby in her arms. " 'Praise be to the All-Powerful 
God ! ' ejaculated one. ' And to the most Holy Sacra- 
ment ! ' echoed her companions. ' Thanks to our Blessed 
Lady of Guadaloupe ! ' ' And to the most Holy Mary, 
Virgin of Soledad, who has taken pity upon us ! ' " 

Note 12, page 174. 
The Be-thar-wa-an, — Love Song of the Omaha In- 
dians, — according to Miss Alice Fletcher, is sung at 
dawn. *' The lover leaves his tent while the morning star 
is shining, and goes to the valley of his maiden. On a 



NOTES. 251 

hill overlooking her tent, among the trees and not far 
from the stream, he pauses and waits the dawn. As the 
east flushes and glows, with stream and bird and breeze 
accompanying, he sings," — each strain ending with a 
long, emphatic, imploring note, a veritable cry. 

Note 13, page 201. 

Baidar Gate is an arch of masonry built as a barrier 
across the road from Sevastopol to Yalta, at the height of 
the pass above the Crimean Vale of Baidar. The trav- 
eler emerging from it comes suddenly upon the enchant- 
ing view of sea and shore. 

Note 14, page 202, 

Alupka is the superb seaside residence of Prince 
WorouzojQP, on the Crimean shore below Yalta. 



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